THE ATTRITION TRAP.

On the eve of Amtrak's fiftieth birthday, it seems fitting to note again how the retrenchment of the railroads in the years leading up to the creation of Amtrak (and later Conrail, to salvage something in the Official Region) parallels the ongoing shakeout of the universities.  In that post, I wondered, "Are any academic administrators sufficiently forward-looking today? Or will the current crop of administrators have to retire, as was the case with the old-line railroad administrators, before there is any change?" I don't know if Matt "Dean Dad" Reed is still reading Cold Spring Shops; credit him, no matter the source, for understanding the attrition trap.

Layoffs are one way to cut a position, of course, but in my experience they are, by far, the least common one. The much more common one is to leave a position unfilled when someone leaves. The position more or less collapses behind them.

Nonreplacements don’t trigger the same kind of scrutiny, or pushback, as layoffs. For one thing, nobody loses their job. It’s possible to argue that someone is harmed -- presumably, the person who otherwise would have been hired -- but most of the time, nobody knows who that is. No one person has the standing to sue. There’s a cumulative, generational cost, but that doesn’t trigger the same kind of conflagration as firing an incumbent.

With nonreplacements, there’s no suggestion that someone’s performance was poor. In collective bargaining environments, incumbents are represented by unions but prospective hires are not; there’s nobody to bring a grievance.

Nonreplacements -- also called cuts by attrition -- aren’t entirely friction-free, but they’re certainly less traumatic than layoffs.

The remaining rail barons managed to get union support for their mergers, which were intended to achieve operating economies, by pledging to respect seniority and by relying on attrition to achieve the smaller payrolls over time.  To a naïve view, that sounds humane: the fun begins when all the senior armature-winders in the Motor Shop decide to cash out and junior armature-winders in the Diesel Shop at the other end of the system have to be brought in; or if the most promising assistant trainmasters find promising offers elsewhere.  The extension to "can't complete schedules" because the senior faculty have fled is straightforward.  If a number of faculty who all came through tenure review at about the same time call it a career at the same time, the head of the economics department might be in the same position as the foreman of the Motor Shop.

You have to sacrifice some, but not all, of those positions to fill a budget gap. That entails picking winners and losers from among the departments that want to hire replacements. You look at the obvious factors -- enrollment trends at the department level, anticipated demand from employers, strategic directions for the institution, the availability of adjuncts -- and perform a kind of triage.

For the moment, some classes might be covered by temporary help, something that couldn't be said of armature-winders, and yet that is not sustainable.  Blue-collar aristocrats take a more realistic view of job prospects, and they won't go railroading.  That a lot of young people still have the academic vocation, despite going on fifty years of that being a losing proposition, will be somebody else's research opportunity.

Nonreplacement isn’t a panacea. It usually relies, at least in part, on the availability of adjuncts who are paid much less than their full-time counterparts. That creates issues of its own, not the least of which is fairness. Over time, nonreplacement can lead to top-heavy departments. In the case of small departments or programs or work areas, the folks who remain wind up with greater workloads to compensate for the loss; that has limits. And at a really basic level, nonreplacement at scale is more of a holding action than a real solution.

The real solution, however, might be to hive off some of the unproductive divisions.  Where is the system trustee of great vision who will do for the excess capacity in converted normal schools what the Final System Plan did for the Erie-Lackawanna?

FRIDAY short TAKES

Here comes this week's roundup of posts that caught my attention, generally because they could be reduced to one pithy remark, which too often was buried in the concluding paragraph. Follow the links for elaboration. Sometimes that includes a refresher on fundamental Cold Spring Shops.

THOSE WHO DENY FREEDOM TO OTHERS DESERVE IT NOT FOR THEMSELVES.

Despite all the attendees at Wednesday night's presidential^* address having received their Trump shots during the closing days of the Trump presidency, they were still wearing their Biden muzzles and sitting apart from their unclean colleagues.  And I'm not referring to the Republicans staying away from the Democrats by that.  Bizarre even by Twilight Zone standards, indeed.

Henry Payne used to be a libertarian-leaning cartoonist.  Of late his observations about Democrats have become blunter and more critical.

THE SECOND CITY COP CALLS IN.

The eponymous weblog is still in suspension.  The chaos continues in the city.

Two more suicides while we’re in limbo – nothing from the Groot and worse, a canned e-mail from Brownie. Did you know that after the suicide in 019, not a single member of the Command Staff showed up at Roll Calls for at least three days? Including the District Commander. But they care. Really. They tell us so in e-mails and e-learning videos.

Four cops shot in a matter of days – no condemnation from the political structure. Almost like they’re scared to show even the tiniest bit of support for the men and women in blue, lest the suspiciously dormant “rioters” notice them.

And now a dead 13-year-old gangbanger. How do we know he’s a gangbanger?

Read the rest for the answer to that question, as well as to the future of the weblog.

STUCK ON THE WAY UP.

Every so often, something goes wrong at an amusement park, even at Blackpool's Pleasure Beach.  "Adrenaline junkies were left stranded at the highest point of the 213ft Big One this afternoon. They had been on the notorious - and agonising - stretch of track travelling up to the top of the rollercoaster when it suddenly stopped."

Sometimes, all you can do is keep calm and mind the gap, and don't look down.

The British are somewhat less obsessive about safeguarding their roller coasters than we are in the States.  Years ago, I was at Alton Towers near Manchester, when the afternoon rains came.  (It's the west side of the British Isles, and it rains every afternoon.)  The coaster kept running.  A lightning storm came in.  The power went out.  A train was on the lift hill when the power went out.  Where it stayed.  Until the rain stopped and the power came back on.  The riders stuck up there appeared to take it all in stride.  I viewed the rains as an opportunity to grab a snack and visit the arcade.

The Big One is a good roller coaster to enjoy, although make sure you take in the continuous-track racing coaster while you're there.

MORE FRACTURES IN THAT EMERGING MAJORITY?

Every so often, a Chicago police stop goes bad.  A few years ago, one might have ended the political career of then-mayor Rahm Emanuel.  Somebody else didn't let a good crisis go to waste.  That's how the current state's attorney for Cook county got her job.  Sometimes, though, Team Brown finds itself at odds with Team Black.

[Former congressman Luis] Gutierrez likened [current state's attorney Kim] Foxx’s actions to those of her predecessor, Anita Alvarez, who came under heavy fire for her handling of the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014.

Alvarez waited a year — until the day that shooting video was released by a judge’s order — to file murder charges against former Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke, who shot McDonald 16 times. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated battery.

“You rightfully accused your predecessor of hiding the Laquan McDonald video,” Gutierrez said to Foxx. “But you chose to not even bother to see the Adam Toledo videos.”

Gutierrez noted that he even dropped his support for Alvarez and endorsed Foxx “believing that you would show greater sensitivity to all disenfranchised communities.”

He now plans to reach out to Foxx’s office Monday to request a meeting to voice concerns about her handling of Adam’s case and what he sees as a glaring lack of Latino leadership in her office.

If you can't get what you want on principle, get what you want by appealing to the tribe.  So it always seems to be, in Chicago.

GOOSE, GANDER?

More information management from Twitter.  "At India's Request, Twitter Blocks Posts Critical of Modi Covid Response."  Note, that's not a complaint from Pajamas Media types.  "The Indian news outlet Medianama was the first to report the situation on Saturday, followed by Buzzfeed in U.S. press."

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 10,216.

The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health.  Governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Lake Geneva) continues to micromanage and destroy local businesses.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.

The latest report from Sweden counts 938,343 infections and 13,923 deaths.

The latest report from Illinois counts 1,321,033 infections and 24,139 deaths.

Conditions in Illinois are such that a transition to a full reopening is in order.  "Illinois will move to the bridge phase when 70% of the population 65 years and older has received at least one dose of vaccine, and to Phase 5 when 50% of the population 16 years and older has received at least one dose of vaccine."

If I have to keep extending this post until Anthony Fauci comes to his senses, or resigns, or until the governor is primaried, or until the ukases are vacated, or until the cows come home, I will.

The state continues to administer vaccines.  The latest count is close to nine million injections (the page doesn't disaggregate among finished and pending) and the latest count of those scary variants notes all of 2,500.

Last week, the governor trailed by 10,167.  Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week is growing by around a hundred, or less. 

As of 12 April, 10,169.

As of 5 April, 10,167.

As of 29 March, 10,125.

As of 22 March,  10.095.

As of 15 March, 10.070.

As of 8 March, 10,017.

As of 1 March, 9,933.

As of 22 February, 9,857.

As of 15 February, 9,693.

As of 8 February, 9,623.

As of 1 February, 9,662.

As of 25 January, 9,739.

As of 18 January, 9,727.

As of 11 January, 9, 860.

As of 4 January, 9,595.

As of 28 December, 9,057.

As of 21 December, 8,414.

As of 14 December, 7,815.

As of 7 December, 7,049.

As of 30 November, 6,201.

As of 23 November, 5,706.

As of 16 November, 5,040.

As of 9 November, 4,516.

RAIL BARON IN FULL SCALE.

A month ago, Canadian Pacific proposed to merge with Kansas City Southern, creating a railroad company serving the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts with trackage in Canada, the States, and Mexico.  The company name would be Canadian Pacific Kansas City.  (Why not Montreal, Mexico City and Pacific or Kansas City Mexico and Orient?)  The proposal contains the predictable corporate spin, e.g. "participate in the realization of synergies."  The point is to take advantage of the new trade protocols under the U.S. - Mexico - Canada pact that recently took effect.

The other Canadian carrier, which currently serves the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts with trackage in Canada and the States and still trades under its socialist name, Canadian National, counter-tendered.  See you in court, say CPR. "[Canadian Pacific] also said that a CN-KCS combination would diminish competition between the Midwest and Gulf Coast by putting the parallel KCS and former Illinois Central routes under CN control."  That's right, dear reader, the railroad that currently operates the most trackage in Wisconsin and in Mississippi is CNR.

Shades of the Conrail feeding frenzy.  Here's Trains analyst Bill Stephens.

Canadian Pacific today finds itself in the same uncomfortable – and threatened – position that Norfolk Southern was in 25 years ago.

Back in October 1996, CSX Transportation utterly shocked NS when it announced it had a deal to acquire Conrail. The $8.1 billion merger would give CSX access to the New York market and in the process relegate NS to the status of an Eastern regional railroad.

Last month in a blockbuster $29 billion deal, CP announced it would acquire Kansas City Southern to create the first railroad linking Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. This would give CP a network that would nearly mirror that of larger rival Canadian National, but with access deep into the major consuming and manufacturing regions of Mexico.

Then along comes CN this week with its stunning and unsolicited $33.7 billion bid for KCS. All of a sudden CP could go from a more potent competitor for CN to an also-ran. CN+KCS would become the third largest Class I railroad in North America, making CP by far the smallest fish in the pond.

What this means, of course, is that the stakes are as high today for CP as they were for NS back in 1996. CP simply cannot let KCS fall into the hands of its larger rival.

We still haven't heard from the four major U.S. carriers.

FRACTURES IN THAT EMERGING DEMOCRAT MAJORITY?

Rod Dreher is no fan of High Postmodern Authoritarians.

The threat to us comes primarily from the elite leadership class in government, academia, corporate America, media, and other institutions.

It is true that conservatives are badly led, and that those who think things will be okay if we just cling tighter to Trump are only making things worse, if only because they have chosen a false solution. But I genuinely don’t understand how any non-progressive person can think things are basically fine. Let me put a fine point on it: I don’t understand how any non-progressive person can be anything just short of apocalyptic, given the state of things.

Let me explain.

We are living in a country whose elites are teaching us to see each other primarily on the basis of race, and to hate each other for it.

That's being exploited among white people by provocateurs who would distinguish the Anglo-Saxon salt of the earth types from the various sissified dandies who either appease or seek to rule the woke mob.

It's a Dreher column, which means there are excursions into all sorts of dimensions of the decline and fall, including the likely bad outcomes of "inclusive education for the masses, private tutors for the richest of the dandies."  (Weren't the most promising and politically reliable spawn of the Soviet nachalstvo allowed to read Adam Smith?)

It is to the apocalyptic view, and to the fractures, that I wish to speak.  "We are being demonized and driven out of our jobs and livelihoods, having our children propagandized by ideologues trying to separate them from their families and even their understanding of themselves as male or female, and being told that we are guilty of racist bigotry simply for believing in rewards for achievement — things that were common in America until the day before yesterday."

Although I'm tempted to channel Aaron Rodgers and spell out R-E-L-A-X:  there are still longer elaborations on what I hinted at last week to come, a passage in a Jack Kerwick column that Mr Dreher characterized as "If Berwick [c.q.; is anyone else as annoyed with dictation software as I sometimes am?  -- Ed.]  had not written the odious paragraph [David "Bourgeois Bobos"] Brooks cited, I would have agreed with his column" points to the fracture.

And during the [Black Lives Matter] riots of last summer when citizens of all racial backgrounds across the fruited plain were joining together and taking up arms to protect their communities against the ravages of vandals, Hispanic gangbangers in places like Chicago distinguished themselves on account of their zeal: They not only bludgeoned and shot at black criminals, they also terrorized law-abiding blacks who happened to reside within or pass through the Barrio.

Mr Kerwick's message is about going Schlichter on the sissified dandies who appease or seek to appease the woke mob.  The deeper meaning might be that "communities of color" are not as monolithic as "coalition of the ascendant" or "majority-minority" wonks would have us believe.

HOW DO WE TRANSMIT MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT NOTATION?

What is that Orwell line about some ideas being so goofy only an academic might believe them?  "[P]rofessors at Oxford University are advocating a ban on the use of sheet music as well as an end to the curricular focus on classical European composers—lest the institution continue to be complicit in 'white supremacy.'"  Maybe you have to live in the rarefied air of Oxford to think such things; they're made of sterner stuff at Worcester's Holy Cross.  "Additionally, if sheet music is white supremacy, then successful black composers like André Thomas, Rosephanye Powell, Ysaye Barnwell, and Andraé Crouch would also be complicit. There is a place in the university to learn about different musical traditions across the world that don’t use notation, but saying that sheet music is a form of white supremacy is just ridiculous."

Not to mention that if you're going to show the versatility of the steel pan by arranging other sorts of compositions for it, it helps to have the sheet music.

IT WILL BECOME A NUISANCE.

As more people get vaccinated, the Wuhan coronavirus has a harder time getting from one susceptible person to another.

Eager to know when parts of America are finally approaching herd immunity against COVID-19? Then pay close attention to what’s happening in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Triggered by reopenings and fueled by the rise of more contagious variants, COVID numbers suddenly shot up across all four states last month. But then, just as suddenly, cases began to plummet right at the start of April — and they’re still plummeting today, even as restrictions are being lifted.

Don't you love the legacy press and its tendency to editorialize by pairing two events as if there is some causation?  The story came from Yahoo News, and the fauciism is strong in them.

“I do think this pattern is significant, and the leading factor is the combination of natural immunity from infection and vaccine-induced immunity,” says Yahoo News Medical Contributor Dr. Kavita Patel, a Brookings Institution health scholar and a primary care internist. “Between the two, you’re starting to cover the majority of the population in these states. We’re progressing toward herd immunity kind of by hook or crook.”

We may never actually know when a particular state (or the U.S. as a whole) crosses the herd immunity threshold, which experts describe as the point when 75 to 90 percent of a particular population is protected by antibodies. For one thing, true herd immunity — the goal of getting so many Americans vaccinated that COVID-19 can never spread again — is probably unattainable; vaccine demand is declining, hesitancy persists in certain pockets of the country, variants keep emerging and most of the rest of the world remains unshielded by prior infection or immunization.

But there’s another, more immediate way to look at what vaccination and natural immunity have the power to do, together: end the emergency of the U.S. pandemic, reduce COVID-19 to a manageable risk and let normal life resume even before 75 percent of a particular population has been fully dosed.

This isn't to say the virus has ceased to be a threat. “I do not think we are even close to real herd immunity,” Howard Forman, a professor of public health at Yale University, tells Yahoo News.

I wonder if Mr Forman is working from a model of homogeneous susceptibility.

Still, “the more people who are immune,” Forman explains, “the less steep the inclines.”

Patel agrees. “We’re not likely to get to ‘zero COVID,’” she says. “But it’s like a dimmer switch. When you have about 30 percent immunity, you start to see cases go down. At 50 percent, you start to see precipitous drops. And certain pockets of the country seem to be getting there first.”

Not only that, the asymptomatic infections that so had the boffins worried a year ago is now working in our favor. "[T]esting was scarce, so case counts — though also higher than anywhere else in the U.S. early on — could capture only a tiny fraction of the number of residents who got infected, survived and emerged with some degree of natural immunity. Then all four states experienced sizable winter surges, just like the rest of the U.S., expanding that existing base of protection."

But still, the fauciists have to scold and scare us.

It is the combination of these two kinds of immunity that could be at least starting to starve the coronavirus of vulnerable people to infect and depressing case counts across four of America’s previously hardest-hit states, even as they’ve continued to phase out official mitigation measures and combat more contagious variants.

It is long past time to laugh the scare-mongers to scorn. "[U]nlike previous declines, this one doesn’t seem to be happening because people are changing their behavior and taking more precautions. They’re taking fewer, yet cases continue to fall. Something else seems to be exerting downward pressure on the virus."  Which means that if infections continue to decrease, and the intensive care wards have reserve capacity, it is time to change behavior in favor of living free.

IT WILL NEVER GET BETTER.

A busy stretch of Interstate 95 in Florida's Palm Beach County is due for interchange repairs.  An Orlando Sun-Sentinel article warns, "Construction is going to make it a mess for the next 10 years, but planners believe your drive will get better after that. Really."

I doubt it.  Read the article, and you'll have all the reasons to doubt it.

Among the goals of the projects are to reduce congestion on I-95, lessen traffic spillback from the exits and accommodate future traffic demand. However, the biggest goal for Nick Uhren, executive director for the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency, is to improve safety conditions for pedestrians and bicyclists at these busy interchanges.

The very building of capacity to accommodate future traffic guarantees that the expressway will be congested, whether or not they provide extra space or redesigned interchanges to reduce that merging turbulence, particularly if there's no provision for tolling and congestion pricing.  In addition, several of those redesigned interchanges are of the "diverging diamond" variety, which provide additional opportunities for the expressway traffic to make right turns and keep moving, but at the expense of the pedestrian and bicycle safety the planner seems to think come with.  "The diverging diamond interchange flips the direction of traffic, so that cars are running on the left hand side of the roadway, creating deadly confusion for pedestrians used to seeing traffic on the right."  In any event, as Strong Towns contributor Joe Cortright notes, it is difficult to conceive of the crossings of major roads with expressways as being conducive to much pedestrian traffic.  Particularly (read the article for all sorts of documentation) with all those extra opportunities to make right turns, which is to say, all sorts of opportunities for the motorists to floor it and the pedestrians or bicycle riders to watch out.

LET HER BE THE POSTER GIRL FOR HIGH MODERN AUTHORITARIANISM.

Things have not been going well in Michigan, where dictatorial governor Gretchen "Karen" Whitmer (D-Hell) micromanaged her state straight into a late-pandemic corona hot spot.

Last Christmas, Governor Gretchen Whitmer released one of the wildest, most mind-warping videos I’ve ever seen. It begins with her shouting, “Thank you for joining us!!” over a Zoom call, before introducing none other than Santa Claus. Several scripted and possibly terrified children then prompt Santa to talk about how he wears a mask at the North Pole and uses hand sanitizer before eating cookies, all while Whitmer hovers imperiously in the corner like some yuletide Big Brother. The video ends with her gently informing the tykes that this year they won’t be able to visit their grandparents for the holidays.

Watching that, I kept expecting the Soviet national anthem to start playing or Whitmer’s eyes to turn into rotating swirls. I believe the editorial line here at [The American Conservative] prevents me from advocating drug use, but holy moly, that must be some trip. Yet it’s also typical of Whitmer, who more than any other governor has used the coronavirus to exalt herself into a kind of self-unaware epidemiological monarch. Now, her kingdom is starting to crumble.

There might be more unforced errors in her reign than were laid out in our Declaration of Independence.

Whitmer’s response was heavy-handed. She prohibited all private and public gatherings of any size; she banned sales of carpeting, paint, and gardening supplies; she halted all golf games and lawn mowing services. And when the legislature declined to renew the state of emergency that granted her this authority, she simply ignored them.

The meddlesome ingrates on the Michigan Supreme Court later affirmed that Whitmer couldn’t simply rule without legislative consent. That stripped away many of her powers, though she circumvented this by continuing to issue edicts through the health department rather than the governor’s office. The result has been the protracted abolition of any serious democratic deliberation over Michigan’s coronavirus response. Everything has been done through the royal prerogative of Her Majesty the Governor, who seems to regard her Republican opponents as might a mad queen about to reach for the trapdoor button.

The old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely notably does not exempt strong independent women with Dr. Fauci pillows in their offices. And so Whitmer’s reign has brought with it an endless if predictable series of hypocrisies and abuses.

Michigan's experience might give pause to people who have the Technocratic Vision, if they'd but pay attention.

What can be learned from this reign of error? One takeaway is simply that aforementioned adage. Power does indeed corrupt. Concentrate authority in an elite political class and you end up with a two-tiered system, divided between those who make the laws and can flaunt them and those who don’t and are bound by them. Another is that unilateral governments, authoritarian governments, aren’t as effective as we sometimes think. Because decision-making is left to a relative few, serious dissent gets shut out, with groupthink and epistemic closure the predictable consequences. Even the experts Whitmer claims to be consulting are not immune to this. If they were, Texas would be a COVID hellhole right now.

The most glaring lesson from across the bloodstained 20th century is this: There is no such thing as the all-knowing, benevolent leader. That’s true no matter how much we might whimper for one during times of crisis. But she’s keeping us safe! Except she’s not, is she? In fairness, the current COVID surge in Michigan can’t necessarily be blamed on Whitmer. Recently she had been loosening her state’s restrictions, perhaps realizing her subjects were growing restless. It could be that the U.K. variant is running its course. Or it could be the fault of those eased regulations (though plenty of states have opened up more than Michigan without experiencing similar surges).

The truth is that we simply don’t know why Michigan is suffering. But we do know this: The reason Whitmer sits in all her radiant splendor is because she said she needed unilateral authority in order to manage the pandemic. Now she’s failed; her rationale is gone. Which entitles everyone else to ask: Isn’t it time her powers were rolled back for good?

It is precisely during emergencies that leaders must lead by seeking advice and consent.  The dictatorial governors are now having the worst of the coronavirus responses.  The generalization to other areas of governance is straightforward.  It is the Right and the Obligation of the People to make the necessary alterations.

NO LONGER PRODUCING A SQUEAL THAT DOESN'T GET USED?

National Review's Matthew Scully envisions "Goodbye to the Cruelty of Industrial Animal Farming."  It's now possible to culture meat without breeding and raising animals for slaughter.

Here’s a technology designed to rehumanize us, putting mankind’s brilliance and ingenuity all in service to our gentler side.

Gone, as this innovation reshapes the market, is any further claim of necessity for industrial animal farming, an enterprise that long ago slipped the boundaries of reasonable and conscientious practice — to say nothing of an environmental and public-health influence equally reckless. For meat companies — already challenged by popular, plant-based alternatives — culturing technology will mark a radical redirection, and there is no industry more in need of one.

That story is about commercial scale sale of chicken sandwiches in Singapore. Commercial scale sale of steak might also be possible, according to Reason's Ron Bailey.

The Israeli company Aleph Farms has just unveiled its lab-grown bio-printed slaughter-free fat-marbled ribeye steak. The steak is grown from living cow cells and then incubated to grow, differentiate, and interact in order to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak. The company claims that it has "the ability to produce any type of steak and plans to expand its portfolio of quality meat products."

Bet on emergence: is there any reason for a vegetarian or vegan to be squeamish about eating a protein that wasn't bred for slaughter, or for a conservationist to be squeamish about land left fallow?

A switch to cultured meats and milk could have big benefits for the natural world. Currently, about half of the world's habitable land is devoted to agriculture and 77 percent of that is used to raise livestock and produce milk. Although controversial, one preliminary estimate suggests that producing cultured meats cuts energy use by 7–45 percent, greenhouse gas emissions by 78–96 percent, land use by 99 percent, and water use by 82–96 percent. The end of farming could be in sight as real factories replace factory farming.

Perhaps not so much the end of farming, as a change in its form. What happens, though ... you always have to think beyond the immediate consequences ... if a lot of land currently devoted to field corn for animal feed becomes available for sweet corn for human consumption?

If a chicken sandwich or a boneless T-bone (or does that become a filet or a tenderloin?) don't intrigue enough, might I interest you in Wiener schnitzel?  "A Finnish tech startup hopes to produce protein out of thin air and not much more, creating a plant-based product they can put into healthy drinks and yoghurts or even turn into a meatless schnitzel, the company said."  This project isn't quite ready for the plate, and there are a few teething troubles, although capturing carbon dioxide to make the protein tackles yet another challenge.

Maybe some of the land currently devoted to soybeans for chicken feed will become available to make tofu fish fillets (the ultimate in poor man's lobster) instead.  "Tofu pieces cut thin and covered in batter stand in for the fish, while sides include home fries, home made tarter sauce, coleslaw, and a lemon wedge."

Inefficiencies (in these anecdotes, negative nonpecuniary externalities) are incentives for self-interested agents to harvest (no pun intended) gains from trade.  I might not have been clever enough to see any of these opportunities.  Fortunately, others did.

RENT SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS.

Sometimes, it is good to be pensioned off and out of the fray.  "Faculty members are concerned about the future of four-year institutions in Illinois, including a state bill that would create bachelor degree programs at community colleges, sociology professor Símon Weffer said at Wednesday’s Faculty Senate meeting."

We used to have something resembling a division of effort in the state's colleges and universities, with the research flagship in Urbana, a few converted teachers' colleges with a smattering of graduate and professional degree programs, and each county had a two-year college doing baccalaureate prep as well as technical and vocational certificates, and continuing education.

Now, it's looking more like a free-for-all.  "Weffer said he’s concerned with the general underselling of the importance of four-year institutions in the fabric of our society as a state."  It might have come to this when the four-year institutions decided that paying obeisance to the diversity weenies was more important than having standards.

Or, perhaps, it's about clinging to those few privileges that faculty at four-year state-located universities still have.

“We’re worried that with this document, people will skip the narrative and go straight to the metrics and not see anything that really measures the impact of higher education on the greater society, and when I mean higher education, I mean everything research, artistry teaching, civic engagement and on,” Weffer said.

Weffer also addressed Senate Bill 1832, a bill that would allow community colleges to create bachelor’s degree programs for early childhood education. The bill has gained support from Illinois lawmakers and would address high turnover and low wages in the early education workforce and low enrollment at community colleges across the state, according to an April 7 Chalkbeat Chicago.

“The problem is that if we allow community colleges to start granting a B.A. in any way, shape, or form, it’s only a matter of time that they might say ‘this is only early childhood education,” Weffer said. “We know that one of the things that happens is that these programs tend to be extended.”

I'm not sure how additional credentials address what looks more like the usual labor market response to low pay and crappy working conditions in early childhood education, which has long attracted idealistic young people, particularly young women, but has long been less than truthful about the pay and working conditions.

Whether generating additional capacity in a part of the higher education sector that probably already has excess capacity is another matter.  On the other hand, there's a longer view one might take: were there people in the University of Illinois system raising similar objections when those normal schools started behaving more like universities?  Back then, though, there might have been rising populations.

PATHETIC.

Nothing can make the case for Ben Shapiro referring to "President Potted Plant" quite like the Leader of the Free World, muzzled on a video conference.  "But we are pretty damn sure he looks like a weak, ridiculous old man masked up with other world leaders during a damn Zoom call."  Sad!

WE NEED NO REMINDER TO STAY DEMENTED.

Apparently the Dr. Demento show left the air waves in 2010.  That link will take you to videos of some of the greatest hits, including "Fish Heads."

There still is a Dr. Demento online show.

I wonder, though, whether the usual lineup of parody and satire singers can really do today's world justice.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Here comes this week's roundup of posts that caught my attention, generally because they could be reduced to one pithy remark, which too often was buried in the concluding paragraph.  Follow the links for elaboration.  Sometimes that includes a refresher on fundamental Cold Spring Shops.

REDUCED TO IRRITABLE MENTAL GESTURES?

Pajamas Media columnist Stacey Lennox sees people crying with their mouths full.  "Progressives Have Gotten a Lot of What They Want in 2021—So Why Are They Still So Miserable?"

There's nothing new in that observation.  Here's a recollection from college years.

These were precisely the years of affirmative action, environmental protection, no-fault divorce, and legal abortion becoming national policy. The U.S. wound up its work in Vietnam in such a way as to ensure Vietcong and Khmer Rouge victories. First Vice President Agnew, and then President Nixon, self-destructed. The Equal Rights Amendment appeared on its way to ratification. But what impressed me in those days was how unhappy the Movement (always pronounced Mewve-ment) people remained despite all that.

They hit the wall then, although nobody could have anticipated how refreshing the correction would be, and they're going to hit the wall again.  Along the way, though, some people are going nuts.  "First, those who identify as 'liberal' or 'very liberal' report having had a medical provider tell them they had a mental health condition at significantly higher rates."  Perhaps the stress of keeping track of all the crises whilst walking on eggs for fear of being the next to be denounced makes you nuts.  "There is a never-ending list of problems to solve on the march to some version of utopia, which is entirely at odds with human nature. A connected world makes it feel like the issues of racial tension, inequality, and a so-called 'climate emergency' are bearing down on us with frequency and at a terrifying speed. The corporate media, progressive leaders, universities, celebrities, and now even corporations amplify these messages."

Josh Hammer appears to concur, not without some glee.

The unfortunate reality is that, in our modern political and media ecosystem, a permanently aggrieved, outraged, victimized mentality pays well. For the charlatans and hucksters of "anti-racism" and "critical race theory," therefore, conceding that a development such as Chauvin's conviction might indicate that America's criminal justice system is not "systemically racist" is unconscionable. Indeed, an entire industry has been established to perpetuate this rotten myth. "A post-racial America would be an unmitigated disaster" for this industry, David Azerrad recently wrote for Newsweek. "Instead of charging $6,000 an hour lecturing corporate America on its white privilege, Robin DiAngelo would be selling plastic jewelry on the Home Shopping Network."

The experiments against reality that were so popular from the middle 1960s into the 1970s are still with us, and reality is still implacable.

The Democratic takeover of the White House and Senate, far from being a triumph, is an illustration of just how politically feeble the left has become. It has no leaders more appealing than a seventy-eight-year-old Joe Biden. Who will replace him? There is no second Obama. No youthful leader in the House or Senate stands out. The next-generation figures who have been most touted by the media, such as Beto O’Rourke—the man who was supposed to turn Texas blue—have proved to have little actual support. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is certainly popular with the left, but she and her brand of politics hardly seem prepared to repeat the ballot-box feats of Obama or Biden, both of whom won by concealing the radicalism of their party.

There are two currents at work, each of which will require separate, longer posts to elaborate. First, some of the mascots of today's intersectional coalitions are at odds with each other, and some will be transient in any event. Second, the Democrats own the urban unrest and the shuttered schools and the corona tyranny, and there have to be pragmatists working to exploit those things.

MAYBE IT'S ABOUT GOOD MANNERS, AFTER ALL.

A Northern Star columnist, after ringing all the changes on implicit bias and microaggressions, buries the lede.  "Just because other names may sound different from common names or words in your native language does not mean those names should be converted to your tongue. Putting effort forward to pronouncing someone’s name correctly can make them feel comfortable and welcome."  I wonder if I should hold Northern Star columnists to this standard.  "A name is tied to a person’s identity, and everyone deserves to have their name be properly addressed."  Me too.

SOME OF THE FAVORITES OF MY YOUTH MAKE THE CUT.

Milwaukee doesn't generally come to mind when somebody says "pizza," you're more likely to hear about Chicago or Detroit or New Haven or New York.  There are still some pizzerias of long standing that might be worth a look.  One of them features a pipe organ to sing along to.  The article limits its list to the exurbs.

WHAT IS STILL MISSING FROM THIS DISCUSSION?

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas?

A desert city built on a reputation for excess and indulgence wants to become a model for restraint and conservation with a first-in-the-nation policy banning grass that nobody walks on.

Las Vegas-area water officials have spent two decades trying to get people to replace thirsty greenery with desert plants, and now they’re asking the Nevada Legislature to outlaw roughly 40% of the turf that’s left.

Read on, and discover that they're not really trying that hard.

Las Vegas might be known for splashy displays like the Bellagio fountains on the neon-lit Strip, but officials say residents of bedroom communities and sprawling suburbs embrace conservation measures, including aggressive monitoring of sprinklers and leaky irrigation systems.

A long-time blackjack dealer might not be able to trade on his years of expertise not raising pigs to be paid not to raise pigs, but he can be paid to tear out his grass.

The proposal is part of a turf war waged since at least 2003, when the water authority banned developers from planting green front yards in new subdivisions. It also offers owners of older properties the region’s most generous rebate policies to tear out sod — up to $3 per square foot.

Those efforts are slowing. The agency says the number of acres converted under its rebate program fell last year to six times less than what it was in 2008. Meanwhile, water consumption in southern Nevada has increased 9% since 2019.

Apparently they've never heard of water meters.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CULT REQUIRES SINNERS AND HERETICS.

I suppose we could credit them with punching up.

According to Strategic Vision, consumers who self-identify as Republican buy eight pickup trucks for every one purchased by a self-identified Democrat. They also buy roughly twice as many of each class of SUVs as their blue counterparts, giving them a 55-percent share of the sport utility market overall, though just 25 percent of Americans say they consider themselves members of the GOP.

When it comes to why Republicans prefer megacars, the researchers found that red motorists are looking for a vehicle that is “powerful, rugged and prestigious,” in contrast to Democrats, who want a “environmentally friendly vehicle that is both economical and cool,” and independents, who “functional, reliable and sensible” cars.

Pride and Gluttony are both Deadly Sins, but some forms of Pride are less Sinful than others, and environment-shaming sport-ute and large pickup truck owners has long been a cheap virtue signal among the Prius set.

POOR COUNTRIES TEND TO BE THE MOST POLLUTED.

Another Earth Day is upon us, and we're still here.  Act surprised: we were all supposed to be gone from here by 2000.  A year ago, I was suggesting unfavorable comparisons between the scary prognostications of the doomsday environmentalists and the scary prognostications of the doomsday epidemiologists.  It's still too soon for that Strategic Bombing Survey on the quarantine-and-suppress strategy, but I submit the prognostications were scarier than the reality.

Mark "Carpe Diem" Perry calls the roll of "spectacularly wrong predictions" from that first Earth Day.  His own prediction, "expect more this year" is almost certainly going to stand up.  He noted that one Malthusian trap did activate.  "The prediction of famine in South America is partly true, but only in Venezuela and only because of socialism, not for environmental reasons."  Ironic, isn't it, given that Marx denounced the Malthusian view of unbridled human reproduction as "a libel on the human race?"

Power Line's Steven Hayward also has a good wallow in the past.  "When dealing with a fundamentalist religion it does no good to point out the facts and data about improving environmental conditions, or the reasons behind these happy trends (namely economic growth, open markets, and technological advance), or the sorry record of environmental doomsday predictions ever since the first Earth Day 51 years ago."  Of course it doesn't.  To a true believer, the anomalies serve as a call to believe even more fervently, or to look for the heresies.

I borrowed the title for the post from an Issues and Insights essay.  Authors Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier continue the fundamentalist belief system frame.

Earth Day has devolved into an occasion for environmental Cassandras to prophesy apocalypse, dish antitechnology dirt, and proselytize for a “woke” agenda. Passion and zeal routinely trump science, and provability takes a back seat to plausibility.

Many of those stumping for Earth Day on April 22 will oppose environment-friendly advances in science and technology, such as agricultural biotechnology, fracking, and nuclear power. A pervasive meta-message will be disdain for the capitalist system that provides the resources available for effective environmental protection and conservation.

All of it seasoned with environmental intersectionality, and the continued immamentization of the eschaton.

One of the United Kingdom’s great contemporary thinkers, Dick Taverne, also known as Lord Taverne of Pimlico, discusses the shortcomings of New Age philosophy in his perspicacious book, The March of Unreason.” Taverne deplores the “new kind of fundamentalism” that has infiltrated many environmentalist campaigns as an undiscriminating back-to-nature movement that views science and technology as the enemy and as a manifestation of an exploitative, rapacious, and reductionist attitude toward nature. It is no coincidence, he believes, that ecofundamentalists are strongly represented in anti-globalization and anti-capitalism movements worldwide.

In this, Taverne echoes the late physician and novelist Michael Crichton, who argued in his much-acclaimed novel “State of Fear” that ecofundamentalists have reinterpreted traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths and made a religion of environmentalism. This religion has its own Eden and paradise, where mankind lived in a state of grace and unity with nature until mankind’s fall, which came not after eating a forbidden fruit, but after partaking of the forbidden tree of knowledge – that is, technology. This religion also has a judgment day to come for us in this polluted world – all of us, that is, except for true environmentalists, who will be saved by achieving “sustainability.”

That takes me too far afield from anything where traditional political economy tools work.  But Charles Krauthammer might have been on to something, years ago, suggesting that contemporary environmentalists and primitive sun-worshippers might have had much in common in seeing bad weather or volcanic eruptions as evidence that humans had displeased the gods.

JOE BIDEN'S LIONEL CATALOG.

There might be money in the various pork-barrel, er, transportation infrastructure, spending proposals making their way through Congress for an expanded Amtrak.  Or maybe a functioning demonstration project for high-speed trains in California.

Vice contributor Aaron Gordon got himself in some trouble for suggesting "The U.S. Is Not Ready for High Speed Rail"  Look, I don't care if he even heard of Cold Spring Shops.  It matters more that people take this argument seriously than who ultimately gets it widely circulated.  "Do we take the lower risk, lower reward path to drastically improve the rail infrastructure we already have? Or do we go with the big swing and try to start all over with high speed rail? We have a passenger rail network. It sucks right now, but we can make it better a lot easier than we can build a new one."

It might be wise to read his full article.  Let me direct your attention, dear reader, to one paragraph, which addresses a project that has received a lot of my attention over the years.

In fact, the Chicago to St. Louis route is a perfect example of both what can be achieved and what still stands in our way to better rail service. The route has already received $2 billion in order for trains to have fewer crossings with roads and can travel at 90 mph (soon to be upgraded to 110 mph). But as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2019, that is unlikely to make a significant impact on people's travel habits because the trains rarely go that fast. They often get stuck behind freight trains. And since the freight companies run the rails, they rarely prioritize passenger rail as they're legally required to do. So, despite spending billions of dollars on useful infrastructure improvements that would cut travel times by 20 percent, it doesn't matter because the trains are still scheduled to travel an average of just 53 mph, anticipating inevitable delays. It often goes even slower. If Amtrak could schedule St. Louis to Chicago to travel at, say, 70 mph by finally getting those 110 mph sections and ensuring passenger rail has priority, it would be faster and cheaper than driving.

Union Pacific are willing to work with the Illinois Department of Transportation, they've gone so far as to build a new intermodal yard outside Joliet, although the real heroics would be in restoring the second main track all the way through Illinois, and improving passenger train routes through the Chicago and St. Louis terminals. The market might not be so much the full length of the line, although beating drive time on Route 66, er the double nickel, shouldn't be that hard to do; rather it's the tourists for Springfield or the collegians for Illinois State or the Pontiac shoppers bound to the Mag Mile, that is if the Mag Mile ever becomes a shopping destination again.

There's a lot in the article that's only tangentially about railroads; it will reward careful study for an understanding of the trade-offs involved in any sort of hero project, a number of which weren't respected when the Interstate Highways got started.

There might be a more realistic Christmas wish being offered up by Jeremy Cooney and Timothy Kennedy, both state senators from upstate New York, in one of the Gannett papers.

As people discover that they can reside in affordable areas and work remotely, businesses are thus incentivized to expand in regions that have a talented workforce and a lower cost of living. New York’s “Big 5” upstate cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany and Yonkers meet this new normal. High-speed rail that connects regions beyond the Metro-North line would be a significant factor in stimulating our state’s recovery through workforce attraction and retention.

Although the authors write about high speed rail, they are really offering up the Cold Spring Shops vision of diesel trains good for 125-140 mph.

Imagine your permanent home being in Western New York, the Mohawk Valley or the Hudson Valley. A short trip to a rail station will have you heading at high-speed upstate or downstate at 90 miles-per-hour, working remotely all the while. Tourists would be making similar trips, as would students attending Upstate colleges.

Shifting our mentality around what an Upstate business commute looks like is vital to our economic development strategy. Our roads need fewer cars on them, but all our cities and towns still need people in them to be healthy.

Some of what follows is wishful thinking, and the way to discourage the use of the roads is to price them like the productive assets that they are (and to tear up the ones that aren't.)  But the same logic I applied to the Alton Route applies to the Empire Corridor: collegians for Rochester or Syracuse, rent-seekers for Albany, shoppers bound to Manhattan (same caveat as applies to the Mag Mile.)  It helps to be able to have multiple trains calling at the intermediate stations, as well.

In the realm of the reach, but as long as you are asking Santa, is some thinking about that fast train to Las Vegas.  Brightline are working on something from Victorville to Las Vegas, but now Amtrak are hinting at getting in on that.  If only Amtrak, and the California department of transportation, and Amtrak, might get together on something like a true high-speed capable transit of the mountains west of Victorville, then that other fast line taking shape in the Merced area might have a way into Los Angeles.  And if I had some cold cuts, I could make a Normandie sandwich, if I had a baguette.

THE EMERGENCE OF A CONCEPT.

I first became aware of a line of argument we now understand as Strong Towns in the wake of a police stop that went wrong in Ferguson, Missouri.  One component of that argument is in the decline and fall of formerly vibrant suburbs as creative destruction overtakes the housing stock and commercial infrastructure.  "[O]nce-promising bedroom suburbs have become obsolete and the strip malls and tract houses have trickled down to people less capable of taking care of what they have."

The next step in emergence is its circulation by an academician in one of the Journals of Highbrow Opinion.  "Left-behind suburbs such as Brooklyn Center [a Minneapolis suburb] and Ferguson [the St. Louis suburb] are perfectly tailored to produce inequality, discrimination, and conflict."

I don't know how much time author Will Stancil, a Minnesota legal scholar, spends in the weeds of urban planning or location and land use.  Read the article, dear reader, and note the pure Strong Towns flavor of his claims.

U.S. Census Bureau data indicate that Brooklyn Center is the most rapidly segregating community in Minnesota. In 1990, the city was 90 percent white; its poverty rate was low, at 5 percent. Three decades later, the city is 38 percent white and its poverty rate has tripled, to 15 percent. It is now the poorest major suburb in the Twin Cities region, and it has a higher percentage of residents of color than any other major municipality in the area. Ferguson underwent nearly identical changes in the years before a police officer shot Michael Brown to death in 2014; the city transitioned from 85 percent white in 1980 to 29 percent white in 2010. Over the same period, its poverty rate almost quadrupled.

Might be an interesting conversation to have amongst Strong Towns wonks, New Urbanism wonks (there are differences) and civil rights wonks, which appears to be Mr Stancil's area of concentration.

Like many resegregating suburbs, Brooklyn Center was once a hub of opportunity, where middle- and working-class residents lived side by side. These places have proved attractive to economically successful families of color seeking better schools and an escape from the discrimination and disinvestment that are endemic in segregated central-city neighborhoods. Black Americans especially are migrating to the suburbs in record numbers. Just since 2000, the urban Black population in major metropolitan areas has fallen by about 5 percent, while the suburban Black population has grown by more than 40 percent, according to my calculations.

In wealthy new suburbs and exurbs, where McMansions line endless cul-de-sacs, housing that working-class families of color can afford is scarce. Inner-ring suburbs typically have an older housing stock, including small postwar houses, more rental units, and cheap high-density housing. Families migrating from the central cities of a metro area tend to cluster in these more affordable communities; so do immigrants. (Brooklyn Center has the highest share of foreign-born residents in the Twin Cities area.) Other, more nefarious forces also funnel nonwhite families toward the inner suburbs—such as the practice of discriminatory racial “steering,” wherein real-estate agents are more likely to show families of color homes in already-diverse neighborhoods. As a result, the demographics of many older suburbs are shifting fast.

Some of what he's calling attention to might be driven by a mix of snob zoning and mass-production of homogeneous new houses.  There's something else at work.  "School changes have a major impact on city demographics, because many affluent residents with children will leave if they feel that the percentage of minority students and poor students is too high."  But don't you dare call attention to the toxic culture that sometimes comes with diversity, or to the cultural collapse more generally, at least not in the pages of The Atlantic.  At best you get, "Tragically, the residents of resegregated suburbs face the same obstacles that many had attempted to escape by leaving major cities: struggling schools, unemployment, poverty, and police violence."  Suggest any correlations, let alone causation, between those two phenomena noted in those quotes, at your peril.

WHAT WOULD WE EVER DO WITHOUT EXPERTS?

Possibly better, suggests Inside Higher Ed's John Warner.  Sometimes, you just have to talk like a senior non-com.  "This shit does not work."  He even offers a version of several Cold Spring Shops points.

Obviously great things happen at higher education institutions every day, but in my view, these great things often happen despite existing structures rather than because of them.

In hindsight, this belief has roots as far back as my freshman year at the University of Illinois, where I discovered that you could get a B in your large lecture classes without attending any of the lectures themselves provided you read the textbook -- which the professor had written -- and purchased (and skimmed) the overhead transparency lecture notes from the campus copy shop.

As an indifferent student more interested in things other than class, this was an agreeable bargain at the time, but in hindsight … not great. What meaningful experience did those classes deliver? What lasting learning resulted?

To be fair, I did have a couple of instructors who would change the trajectory of my life, but they were exceptions to the structure they were working within, going beyond the bounds of the kind of work that was incentivized for faculty to provide these transformative moments. Only by defying structural incentives could they deliver experiences that embodied the high ideals of what it means to receive an education.

As a graduate student, I knew pairing up my developmental English students, who were absolutely the students most in need of expert instruction, with the likes of me -- the least experienced instructor -- was not good news for them. This was a structure not designed to help students succeed, but instead to weed them out, having captured at least a semester or two of their tuition revenue.

By way of review, that's the "nonaggression pact" argument and the "senior noncom" argument, both in one essay in the house organ for business as usual on the Woke Campus.

He then pivots to a baffling paean to wonks.

I believe the vast majority of wonks work in good faith. A good wonk operates carefully within the boundaries of the system they seek to explain and influence, grounding their work in evidence, with policy recommendations flowing from this careful work. A good wonk is several million times more desirable than a pundit, who tends to start from a sweeping major premise and then go looking for evidence and extensions of that premise.

Yes, if there are good generalists around, as well as wonks arguing from different sub-systems. When that isn't the case, you get the ongoing disaster that is Fauciism.

I'm not persuaded by much of the specific cases Mr Warner gets down to, although his concluding remark is on point.  "[W]e also can’t allow [wonks] to tell us what is and isn’t possible as though their word is holy writ."

WHAT WAS I SAYING ABOUT THAT VALUE PROPOSITION?

The academic performance information is in and once again the Northern Illinois women's basketball team places seven players on the conference version of the dean's list.  "This is the fourth consecutive year that NIU has had at least six student-athletes selected to the Academic All-MAC Women's Basketball Team."  Two of the players also earned on-the court honors, one of them going from two years in rehab to Sixth Player.  The nationwide version of the dean's list will be released by the coaches' association sometime this summer.

Look, if your honor students are good enough to on occasion beat up the presumptive conference champions, and on occasion the conference participants (plural deliberate) in the association tournament show themselves well, am I really out of place suggesting the Mid-American teams offer a value proposition involving good academics and visible basketball?

AS FAR AS I KNOW, THIS IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE.

The Pennsylvania Hotel, honored in song, is to come down.  "A 1,270-foot tower, bearing the not-at-all-phallic name of PENN15, is its likely replacement."  The two old Muppets who heckled from the balcony, Statler and Waldorf, honored the two hotels hard by New York's termini.

The article concludes, "[W]e hope that the city’s most celebrated phone number ends up in deserving hands."

LET PETTY TYRANTS SHAKE THEIR FLOPPY MASKS, AND QUARANTINERS CLANK THEIR GALLING CHAINS.

It's the 246th anniversary of Paul Revere's Ride and the Shot Heard Around the World.

As I sometimes note at Independence Day or Thanksgiving, our Republic continues to face some of the same challenges that vexed at the Founding, and yet, we persist.

END THE SECURITY THEATER.

I could have flagged the following Robby Soave column for another edition of Friday short Takes.

The message, though, is trenchant enough to merit immediate circulation.

Whenever I tweet that post-vaccination outdoor masking is unnecessary, I am inundated with hostile feedback from liberals who stridently assert that the performance is important because it sends the right message and puts other people at ease. Well, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) probably puts some people at ease, too—but it shouldn't, because removing our shoes and belts before we get on a plane doesn't make us any safer at all. The TSA is a massive waste of time, money, and energy, and the American people have put up with it for more than 20 years. If we don't want pandemic restrictions to become the new airport security, there needs to be pushback: Get vaccinated, and then get back to normal.

Exactly. Beer garden season approaches. Enjoy the sunlight which disinfects the outside, and the lager that disinfects the inside.

THE PREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES OF ENABLING DYSFUNCTION IN THE NAME OF AUTHENTICITY?

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler fears the long hot summer to come.

What’s actually at issue here is whether black people in America really want to join with the other ethnic groups present in the land in a national common culture — that is, a consensus about behavior, ceremonies, and manners — or would rather opt out of it, oppose it, or violently destroy what’s left of it. The key to these questions is how to explain the failure-to-thrive of a large black demographic despite the apparent victories of a long civil rights campaign, colossal expenditures of tax money for assistance, and affirmative action galore. I would explain it as the malign influence of neurotic white liberalism acting on the aforesaid black ambivalence about joining in or remaining apart from that common culture.

That's certainly a possibility in Minnesota, where woke education seems to coexist with less than competent (or is it demoralized?) policing, and one Donald Trump might have tapped into a more generalized discontent about deconstructing convention.  That neurotic liberalism doesn't do much to encourage the not-yet-thriving part of the black demographic, and yet, the neurotic liberals might suggest that the broader culture is not yet all in on buying into the success of the kids who manage to thrive.

The upshot, for now, is that white liberalism has given black America permission to act violently and destructively, to disobey the law, to oppose officers attempting to enforce the law, and to justify the whole package of uncivil behavior on the grounds that “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” are the forces that keep black Americans from thriving. The script for all this prevails because liberalism cannot otherwise explain its own failure to uplift black America over many years of sedulous striving. They are left disappointed, ashamed, and guilty, and neurotically give themselves permission to support black hostility and hatred against white people as a form of self-punishment. The catch is that not all white people in America are neurotic liberals and they are not in favor of continuing white self-punishment.

The question at hand is how much longer this crazy script will be allowed to run. It appears that the country is about evenly split between those in favor of promoting black hostility and those disinclined to further submission. It’s up to American political leadership to decide, and for now the liberals are the party holding the levers of power — government, in essence, representing the blunt force that determines which way things go. And, at the head of this government sits the inert and tractable Joe Biden, who seems to have had it decided for him.

I'm still not sure whether Mr Biden is the most cunning manipulator since Lyndon Johnson to come out of the Senate, or the most easily manipulated by Congress or whoever is calling the shots since Jimmy Carter.  Not a good place, though, for the political types to be, an evenly divided electorate with neither major faction's base inclined to compromise.

IT'S A MORE HONEST APPROACH THAN THE BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES.

The current top association football (soccer, if you will) squads in Great Britain and Western Europe have just set up their own tournament series.  Milwaukee sports pundit Bryan Dee offers a comparison.  "This would be like the Packers, Niners, Patriots, Steelers, Cowboys, and Giants forming their own version of the NFL playoffs that they automatically qualify for every year regardless of their regular season record."  The sarcastic part of me wonders how is that any different from participants in the Southeastern Conference calling themselves colleges.  Cartels are always at risk that someone will defect, and Notre Dame and Oklahoma defected from a revenue-sharing agreement in college (American rules) football years ago, long before the playoff format of today took shape.

Mr Dee continues.

By grouping up with other high-grossing teams, top-tier matchups will be created all the time, driving TV ratings, ticket sales…you get the idea.

The rest of the soccer world, as you might imagine, is irate.

Their hopes of European football glory and a huge Champions League paycheck are being circumnavigated by 12 greedy teams.

Fans and friends of the Mid-American Conference understand.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 10,167.

The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health.  Governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Lake Geneva) continues to micromanage and destroy local businesses.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.

The latest report from Sweden counts 900,138 infections and 13,788 deaths.

The latest report from Illinois counts 1,302,241 infections and 23,955 deaths.

Conditions in Illinois are such that a transition to a full reopening is in order.  If I have to keep extending this post until Anthony Fauci comes to his senses, or resigns, or until the governor is primaried, or until the ukases are vacated, or until the cows come home, I will.

The state continues to administer vaccines.

Since mid-December, Illinois has doled out 8,054,634 coronavirus vaccines, including another 115,330 doses Saturday.

Of that, just over 3,330,000 million people in Illinois are fully vaccinated, meaning two weeks removed from their final dose, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health’s website. That’s about 26% of the state’s population — well under the 80% needed for herd immunity.

We'll see about that herd immunity. That 80% might be a calculation based on homogeneous susceptibility, and another 1.3 million flatlanders have the immunity that comes from being sick.  If susceptibility is heterogeneous, the state might be in better shape than the pessimists would have you believe.

Last week, the governor trailed by 10,169.  Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week is growing by around a hundred, or less.  A Lockdown Sceptics essay suggests Sweden's epidemic "began to retreat" in May of 2020, might the recent tallies I'm reporting suggest there's convergence in the courses of contagion despite different regimes?

As of 5 April, 10,167.

As of 29 March, 10,125.

As of 22 March,  10.095.

As of 15 March, 10.070.

As of 8 March, 10,017.

As of 1 March, 9,933.

As of 22 February, 9,857.

As of 15 February, 9,693.

As of 8 February, 9,623.

As of 1 February, 9,662.

As of 25 January, 9,739.

As of 18 January, 9,727.

As of 11 January, 9, 860.

As of 4 January, 9,595.

As of 28 December, 9,057.

As of 21 December, 8,414.

As of 14 December, 7,815.

As of 7 December, 7,049.

As of 30 November, 6,201.

As of 23 November, 5,706.

As of 16 November, 5,040.

As of 9 November, 4,516.