WELCOME TO THE CLUB.

Diesel trains cruising at 100 mph or better are one of Cold Spring Shops's favorite things.

Afternoon Hiawatha at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, summer 1964.

Kent Kobersteen photograph scanned from Scribbins, The Hiawatha Story,  page 120.

Similar signs are now being posted in south Florida, although I fear that impatient motorists will pay them little heed.

In California. your tax dollars are at work, slowly providing viaducts and fills for the demonstration bullet train that might connect Merced to Tracy by the mid-2030s.

That tax dollars are involved guarantees that the fool's errand will continue. At least when private investors in the Chicago - New York Electric Air Line saw all their money spent on a big fill over a small creek, they stopped subscribing.

LIFE SUCKS. THEN YOU DIE.

That's the title of a send-up of the canonical country music song originating in Britain in 1988 with a thrash metal band, whatever that means, and later picked up by a Massachusetts group called The Fools.  (If I'm referring to two different songs, please let me know.)  Here are the opening verses, as I recalled them, from that Fools page.

My house burned down in a flash of thunder
My wife ran off with a one-legged plumber
My crops fell dead when the riverbed went dry
My dog got squashed by a pickup truck
My son ran away and got hooked on drugs
My daughter's knocked up by the class of '85

People say that life is good
It don't seem good to me
I'm lost without a paddle
And I'm headed up shit creek
People say that life is fun
But I don't know why
As far as I can tell
Life sucks then you die

That might be a Profound Meditation on the Empty Lives of Flyover People.  On the other hand, you might be familiar with E. A. Robinson's "Richard Cory."  Here's the town squire who seemingly has everything, while the townfolk are struggling.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

The bank panics of the transition from Gilded Age to the so-called Progressive Era will do that to people.

PERFORMANCE TESTS. HIGHER EDUCATION ADMINISTRATORS OUGHT TRY THEM.

Northern Illinois University's athletic director recently released long time volleyball coach and disk jockey Ray Gooden.  Ticking the diversity boxes is still a good thing in the athletic department, but you're only as good as your last tournament appearance.

“We appreciate Ray’s years of service and his dedication to NIU Athletics, the volleyball program and his student-athletes,” [athletics director Sean] Frazier said. “His record and accolades speak for themselves. He has made a huge impact on this department, the university, the volleyball community and beyond. Unfortunately, over the last six seasons, we have not seen the program take enough steps forward to compete for MAC Championships and NCAA Tournament appearances, which is the standard we have set.”

Just once, I'd like to see the academic administrators be held to similar standards.  For example, the standard for department heads might include hiring and retaining faculty whose publications are in major journals, and cited by researchers at peer and aspirational departments.  Northern Illinois currently expects all aspirants to tenure to submit grant applications: there might be a criterion for successfully obtaining competitive grants from the national institutes or endowments or the National Science Foundation.  Those departments that grant doctorates ought be evaluated for their success at placing graduates in peer or aspirational departments, particularly in tenure track jobs.

The "hiring and retaining" part is more complicated than it looks.  Is a department providing the sort of academic environment that makes the new arrivals look so good that they get hired away?  Alternatively, is the department beset with professional jealousies in such a way that the high achievers have a current curriculum vitae circulating at all times, which is to say one foot out the door?  How fares the honors program?

Thus, there are obligations for the deans and the university-level academic administrators.  Are deans engaging in the sort of leadership that fosters collegiality and limits the corrosive effects of professional jealousy in departments?  Are promotions and pay raises available to successful faculty as a matter of course, rather than as a desperate response to an outside offer?  Is the net effect one of raising the institution's profile among the sort of striving students who might read the U.S. News rankings? I recall, thirty years ago, a university president expressing fears that his institution was "becoming too selective."  That might play well with the egalitarians, but apparently there are limits.  For example, a trip to the Orange Bowl did raise student interest in Northern Illinois, but apparently even an institution with reservations about becoming too selective has standards.  Why not make performance goals in recruiting stronger students and a faculty worthy of them be the standards for the college and university administrators?

In athletics, the powers that be are certainly not standing still and waiting for the aspirants to catch up.  Take Wisconsin football.  I'd say, "please?" but for the way the athletic director is making changes.  The football team struck the director as stagnating under Paul Chryst, with appearances in the conference title game, let alone that expanded playoff format, seeming unlikely.  Thus, at mid-season, he made defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard the acting head coach.  There was a lot of talk about Mr Leonhard having a good chance at becoming head coach.  But that acting tag had to be chopped away with the Axe, and when that didn't happen, Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell got the gig.  I lose track of the conference alignments these days, although I recall that Cincinnati as one of the mid-majors inspired Ron Dayne to play a lot better at the end of the last century, and more recently Cincinnati made that expanded playoff.  Presumably, that is the standard at 1440 Monroe Street.  Performance tests, don't you see?

I. ADVENT

The temperate weather of Thanksgiving weekend was conducive near Cold Spring Shops headquarters, and the street will again be blinged out almost like Candy Cane Lane.

With the widespread abandonment of coronavirus restrictions, despite continued protestation from the remaining corona tyrants and Democrat operatives, but I repeat myself, the seasonal trains are out and about again.

We start with a look at Chicago Transit Authority's holiday train, which will again be accepting passengers as it makes the rounds of the L system.

Shutterstock image retrieved from Secret Chicago.

Last year's meditation on solar-powered blinged-out houses is relevant this year as well.

THE RETURN OF THE MEDIEVAL.

Higher education as we understand it originated in the seminary, and many of the trappings of the academic vocation have an ecclesiastical look to it.  Now, it appears that fidelity to the One True Faith is back as well.  Statistical illiteracy, for example, is not a flaw, it is a feature, as its presence makes claims of "disparate impact" easier to make.

No rigorous and fair-minded researcher with any understanding of statistics, experimental design, or the irreproducibility crisis would take this study seriously. Indeed, the fact that it passed peer review is yet more evidence that peer review now functions to credential and accelerate groupthink rather than to deter it.

Such shoddy research is far too common in the sciences and social sciences. This is a grave enough problem in its own right, but it has more serious consequences for America as a whole. We have delegated policymaking authority to professionals who claim expertise in wide swathes of administrative policy, judicial decisionmaking, and legislation. Those experts who claim the mantle of “Science” are foremost among these would-be professional experts. Such men and women far too frequently subordinate the search for truth to the search to impose a preferred policy. Their shoddy research methods are part and parcel of their desire to forward a political agenda—although it should be emphasized that even researchers without a political agenda now use statistical and experimental methods guaranteed to produce a mass of false results.

It's supposed to be the role of the university to weigh those conflicting claims in the most objective way practicable.

Universities themselves should be viewed as places where members of an academic community gather to discuss ideas of the day. They should generally not take stands on issues. The opinion of the president of XYZ University should not be construed as representing the policy position of the institution, since universities are comprised of many individuals with diverse viewpoints, each of which should be heard. University presidents and deans should keep quiet as a rule on public policy matters.

To be sure, if Russia ordered a successful nuclear missile strike on New York City, it probably would be appropriate for university presidents to condemn the event. But it is better to err in the direction of remaining neutral than to make institutional policy pronouncements on behalf of a diverse campus community. In short, universities should be true “marketplaces of ideas,” not moral or political arbiters on issues of the day.

That might be the ideal. These days, though, skepticism about any sort of truth being knowable, combined with some faculty members holding priors so tight you'd be hard-pressed to sodomize them with a jack-hammer, and academic life is an exercise in the bullies constructing their truths out of untruths.

Typical academic disciplines work by seeking truth, and then using the facts that have been established to attempt to build true theories which explain how the world works. The result of that is each development in disciplines like physics, math, logic, engineering, technology, philosophy, and biology proceeds by studying the world and attempting to describe it accurately. Then, using the facts which can be established intellectuals seek to correct past errors and create better and better explanations of how the world works. It’s a lot like building a building, there is a foundation that is built on the enlightenment liberal tradition of rationality, and each generation adds to the work that has been done by the previous generations. Using reason, logic, and evidence careful academics go about correcting mistakes, eliminating past errors, and developing knowledge so that each generation gets a picture of the world which is more detailed and higher resolution then the previous generation. The process is not perfect, nor is it linear; there are starts and stops as old errors are discovered and need to be corrected, but that is the general shape of what is going on.

There is no end to this sort of adding on. Continental drift or not? Big bang or not? Quantity theory of money or not?  You don't get to say "Now that the results make me comfortable with my priors we stop looking."

As such these academic activist scholars are not like builder building a building, attempting to build true theories on a strong foundation of truth. They are like activists cooks in an intellectual kitchen cooking up theories that help them achieve their political aims. You can imagine a chef of wokeness saying “take a cup of Marx, add two cups Frankfurt School, A gallon of Foucault, add 10 ounces of Derrida, a pinch of Gramsci, bake in the universities for two decades and then you get a delicious stew of wokeness! Yum Yum!” This is how wokeness developed.

Now, the question remains “how do these academic activists resolve all the apparent contradictions?” This is a question that deserves it’s own essay. However, a brief answer is twofold. First, the ideas are repeatedly re-theorised in a way that allows them to be put together so they can be used to achieve their political aims. The second is that because wokeness makes heavy use of a postmodern view of the world, judge their ideas with postmodern standards. Since their main standard is “is this idea useful in our struggle to achieve our vision of social justice?” they will often judge the validity of an idea by how useful it is for them to achieve their aims, rather then by the traditional standards of reason, logic, and evidence. As such they tend not to concern themselves with meeting the standards of the enlightenment liberal tradition of rationality which they reject.

In practice this often appears to the average person as different standards in different situations and appeals to different theories depending on what is useful at the time, refusal to engage on fair terms, changing the rules of debate, and making use of language games and shifting definitions. As frustrating as this may be, it is important to remember that from within their own system this all makes perfect sense and there is a logic to what they are doing.

As a purely academic exercise, inventing theories for the sake of inventing theories might be fine. Using intellectually constructed realities as organizing principles for reality realities will not end well.

THE INDUSTRIAL RESERVE ARMY ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE.

The heirs to Leon Trotsky continue to wish for a possible freight railroad strike becoming the opening act in the long-postponed Final Crisis of Capitalism.

Under the guise of being the “most union-friendly president in American history,” the Biden administration has pursued a deliberate policy of using the services of the corrupt union apparatus to prevent the outbreak of strikes and curb wage growth by enforcing substandard contracts. On the railroads, Biden sought to replicate the “successes” that he scored earlier this year in the refinery industry, as well as on the West Coast docks, where 20,000 workers have been kept on the job since July without a contract.

However, railroaders are challenging more than just the policy of the current administration. They are combatting the entire structure of “labor relations” as it has evolved over the past 40 years, the central feature of which has been the complete integration of the unions with the state and the corporations. The job of the union bureaucrats, which they have dutifully and ruthlessly carried out and for which they have been handsomely rewarded with billions of dollars in corporate stock, has been to help force through massive cuts and suppress all working class opposition.

Under this framework, the living standards of the working class were thrown back by a century, while inequality reached its highest levels on record. Now it is buckling under the stress of decades’ worth of pent-up social anger which can no longer be postponed.

I don't know, the continuation of that essay suggests that the only place there is an industrial reserve army is in the evergreen disciplines.  (As an aside, remind me again, how the absence of television or polio vaccines or instant replay translated into higher living standards for the working class of the Coolidge era.)

During the last week of voting on the railroads, 50,000 graduate students in California and New York City went out on strike to demand massive pay increases to cover skyrocketing rent and cost of living. They are members of the United Auto Workers, where Will Lehman, a socialist and Mack Trucks worker, is running for union president on a platform of abolishing the bureaucracy and establishing rank-and-file control.

Since the rail contract was first proposed in September, tens of thousands of pilots and other airline workers have voted to reject contracts and authorize strikes. Like railroaders, they are under the jurisdiction of the anti-worker Railway Labor Act. While the corporate press and the union bureaucracy present this as a “disaster” that would hurt “the economy,” tens of millions of workers would welcome and support a rail strike and would take it as the signal to push for their own demands.

Perhaps so, although from the perspective of a retired railroader, not so much.

I quickly discovered from an angry old conductor that every minute counts when you are being paid by the hour—especially when you’re on overtime. We had a “toe to toe” confrontation over our release time once when our watches disagreed by a few seconds. “That was ninety-five cents you were about to throw away. And don’t forget to put in for the eighty-five cents arbitrary we’re owed for coupling an air hose.”

These men of the Greatest Generation—who scavenged for food during the Great Depression—scoured their weekly statement of earnings, checking it line-by-line for any minuscule errors or omissions. Certain that they were purposely being cheated, they immediately ran to their union rep, upon finding any discrepancy. One brakeman even insisted there was a conspiracy afoot: “Think of how much money they [the railroad] saves if they short every employee out of a single minute. It adds up to a fortune.”

Most accepted the fact, that with their level of education, even after having served in the military during World War II, they were reasonably well compensated. They coveted the free healthcare that railroad employment (at the time) provided them. To that end, their families simply had to understand that the privilege of “marking off” amounted to a voluntarily pay cut since they weren’t compensated whenever they didn’t work. Holidays were observed only when they happened to fit into a railroader’s work schedule. Neighbors had to accept that any social plans were temporary, and subject to sudden unannounced cancelation. When able to attend a high school play or sporting event, the railroader was excitedly introduced to his children’s friends as the dad they’d alluded to from time to time, just to prove that he actually existed. When the coal miners went on vacation, or the Florida tourist season ended during the summer, a drop in business meant that railroaders were furloughed—cut off. Thus, the rule of thumb for the older generation of railroaders was to make as much as they could while they could.

Those older heads might have trouble understanding why what looks like a generous increase in pay packets with no change in terms of service doesn't sell. The newer railroaders see things differently.

I began to notice the hastening evolution in the grand scheme of things as my career progressed. The old heads retired and were replaced by younger men with high school or college educations. While some were likely management candidates, most soon realized that the pay and benefits they earned as union-represented agreement-covered workers greatly exceeded what they could expect to make sitting behind a desk, Monday through Friday, nine to five. The difference was that because of seniority, the better paying jobs and preferred days off belonged to senior railroaders. It always seemed unfair to me that the time when a wife and family needed the railroader the most was when he could schedule his vacation the least. So, he marked off without pay, if he could afford to.

As women began to enter the railroad workplace in the operating crafts as well as many clerical positions from which they had previously been excluded, the dynamics of the industry changed dramatically. Time off became even more important.

Less senior railroaders mark off and deal with it. Tenure trackers whine in Inside Higher Ed about their lack of work-life balance.  Meanwhile, the brass hats continue to argue the previous sort of contract.

By contrast, contract negotiations remained pretty much standard. The old management playbook appeared to be, “Open the cage, throw in a little meat, and watch them fight each other over it.” To the older men, who grasped every penny as if it was their last, getting a few cents more per hour was a huge victory. When the enhanced contract was finally agreed upon, the increased wages were factored in and calculated, and a long awaited back-paycheck was issued. Once in the bank, it usually meant a new car, a family vacation, or paying accrued debts. No one seemed to care that paid vacation or sick leave never remained on the table long after initial Section 6 notices were introduced. It was all about wages. Those old fellows were grateful for a job that put food on the table and a roof over their family’s head, even if it meant that they seldom got to sleep there, and most of their meals were enjoyed conversing with the waiter at some corner hash house in the middle of the night. A raise was a raise.

That seems to be the attitude of the Jarrett regency, that is, if the Jarrett regency is still paying attention to the possible railroad strike in another week.  The new hires, on the other hand, have an understanding of labor markets that's beyond Karl Marx or any other minor post-Ricardian.

The most prominent change has been the expectation of the new breed of employees who now work for the railroad—airline pilots, teachers, servicemen and other educated professionals. Management can’t just callously toss money on the table and expect their workers to go away with a smile on their face counting their blessings, as they did in the old days. There are so many other options for workers or job candidates, with or without higher education levels. Railroads refuse to recognize that they can’t rely on past practice to guarantee future performance.

As to the current national quagmire: Quality of life is not just a passing fad. It’s a core concern. You’re going to have to deal with it. It’s not going away.

Failure to offer some program of paid sick leave is not only unconscionable, but patently unsafe. I often went to work so sick I could hardly keep my head raised to observe the signals ahead—but I had to. For most other people, even those employed in entry level occupations elsewhere, an allotment of annual sick leave is customary. It only makes sense that most successful companies do not want sick employees in the workplace risking infection and further absenteeism to others. Not so the railroads.

I repeat, because repeat I must: we are all underemployed compared with our ancestors.  Now it might be that two-plus years of printed money being handed out to encourage people not to work is contributing to the current impasse in transportation, but I don't carry on about income and substitution effects in labor supply simply to tease the have-it-all feminists, do I?  Nor about the false economy of running more trains with fewer workers, when that becomes, predictably, the absurdity of a dog-catch crew being called to a train, which subsequently doesn't move, and twelve hours later another dog-catch crew shows up at the same train.

Trimming the workforce to the bare bone in order to cut costs has simply exacerbated the dilemma. Thanks to maximization of human resources (by whatever name you wish to call it), there no longer is ample manpower to fill vacancies, even when assigned workers are ill. Predicated on yo-yo force reductions of the past, it was assumed that after months of payless paydays, due to the pandemic, workers would be flooding sign-up locations in droves, and climbing aboard their trains. Not so. With attractive alternative options, new hires didn’t come back, and long-time workers who were qualified resigned and claimed the Railroad Retirement benefits they had earned. People are voting with their feet.

Railroad management can publicly deny that a toxic atmosphere of threats and retribution exists. The pressure to produce more has become even greater, but you can’t extract blood from a turnip. As if to add insult to injury, railroads boastfully assert that employees really add nothing to their bottom line. The unions have picked up the gauntlet that management has thrown down and has answered, “We’ll see.” They’ve done a masterful job of educating the public this time, especially the press.

There might be battle lines drawn, but this time the sound track isn't Buffalo Springfield's.  Labor markets serve to reallocate resources, and railroad managers are getting a hard lesson on that point about now.

THANKSGIVING IS AN OCCASION TO GIVE THANKS.

There will be no Friday short takes this week.  Let us contemplate a global short take, and give thanks.

Inequality has declined in many ways. But when thinking about inequality, it is essential to remember that humanity was once almost universally poor, hungry, and miserable. In a state of widespread deprivation, any progress can create inequality. But equality of misery isn’t desirable, making [vice president Kamala] Harris’s claim about a rise in global inequality highly misleading.

The prospect of a railroaders' strike, combined with the staffing challenges the trucking companies and air carriers are dealing with, is reason for me to emphasize, again, our traditional Thanksgiving message.

Spare a few moments thanks for the young people in harm's way around the world, for the people in emergency services who deserve to sit down to the turkey without the alarm ringing, for the people in transportation, tourism, and entertainment passing on their family gatherings to enhance yours.

I give thanks for your readership and your comments.  Cold Spring Shops will be taking a long weekend off.

NO MORE BOMBASTIC RHETORIC.

Fifty years ago, I successfully campaigned for student government using the post title as a slogan.  Yes, that was the university of Wisconsin, and yes, a constituent or two noted that the slogan was bombastic itself.

Those were interesting years for student government, which was in transition from being dominated by hardcore pro-Khmer Rouge types to the Pail and Shovel Party, whose platform was to convert the student government fees to pennies and scatter them for students to scoop up with beach toys.  They kinda-sorta-delivered on that promise, as well as another one to bring the Statue of Liberty to Madison.  There was a precursor slate calling itself the PIMP Party, for People Indignant about Most Parties Party and one or two of theirs were also in the student senate at the time.  Steve Brist and Gerry Kassalow and I moved on to other things.

IT'S ON.

The maintenance, signal, and shop craft brotherhoods have rejected the proposed new railroad contract, and now the conductors have said no.

By the slimmest of margins, conductors represented by the SMART-TD union rejected the deal, fueling the prospects of a nationwide strike that could begin as soon as Dec. 9. Some 50.87% of voting members rejected the agreement.

Yet the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen ratified their agreement, as did yardmasters represented by SMART-TD. Some 53.5% of engineers backed the deal, along with 62.4% of yardmasters.

Turnout was a record for both unions, reflecting the contentious relationship between railroads and the rank and file.

Sorry, I can't help you with that acronym.

Under the provisions governing railroad labor relations, there is a cooling-off period through December 8, although if the continuing negotiations appear to be at an impasse, railroads can impose embargoes on freight as early as next week Monday, November 28.

SOMETIMES IT SUCKS EVERYWHERE.

Arnold Kling characterizes elite academia as a cuckoo's nest.

I think that one reason the problem is difficult is that the parents who want their children to attend elite schools are so screwed up. At least in K-12 education, there are parents who are actively fighting against Woke indoctrination. Maybe this is only taking place sporadically, and perhaps the cause is hopeless. But at least not every parent is taking this lying down.

When it comes to college, as far as I can tell, parents are desperate to send their children to Ivy League U, regardless of how insanely Woke it might be. Even ten years ago, before the Woke stuff hit, when I was teaching at a high school, the intensity of parents’ desires to see their children get into top universities saddened me.

I have yet to meet a parent who says, “Don’t worry about getting top grades in high school—it’s ok if you don’t get into Harvard. And choose extracurricular activities based on how well you enjoy them, not on how they will look on your transcript.” Much less a parent who says, “Don’t you dare go to Princeton! Not even if you get a full ride! Instead, find a school that’s halfway sane.”

I wonder how wide-ranging that sample is. It's likely that there are still families that, thanks to budget constraints and geographic location, are not obsessing over whether or not their spawn get that thick envelope from the Ivies.  It's also likely that there are families where the desperation over getting their spawn into the Ivies is out of recognition how far the regional comprehensives, land-grants, and state flagships have strayed from challenging their students, and the choice is between bundles offering woke indoctrination with better networking opportunities as opposed to woke indoctrination with game day.

A number of commenters on the post are making similar points.  Good.

A WAUKESHA MASSACRE EACH WEEKEND.

Today marks a year since the Waukesha Christmas Parade Massacre, and we've already noted the toll of bad driving in Milwaukee.  The people who live along the dangerous roads are taking an interest in traffic taming and other measures.  Good.  Milwaukee is a dangerous place to live: Milwaukee breaks city homicide record for third year in a row.

Saturday, a 43-year-old man was killed near Hopkins and Hampton, the death that broke the record. Police are seeking unknown suspects in that case.

Michael Ray is a business owner in that area who says violent acts like these not only affect safety in the community, but prevent people from investing in the area.

"It's a major setback for me being a business in this area when already a lot of businesses closed over here," said Ray.

Residents can pin their hopes on violence mitigation programs and other social work. Ultimately, though, it's on people in Milwaukee or Chicago or Los Angeles or Philadelphia to get rid of their soft-on-crime Soros prosecutors.  If the unmitigated violence stays within city limits, arguably, that is a decision voters can make, to have a different balance of mitigation and prosecution than people in Waukesha vote for.  Sometimes, though, the suspect out on no bail goes outside the county to commit the crime.

The weekend just concluded in Milwaukee was mostly peaceful.

Milwaukee police are investigating six shootings overnight Monday, where more than half of the victims are teens.

Police are searching for suspects in all the shootings, which all happened within the span of four hours across the city. But all those who were shot are expected to survive.

The article does not document whether any of the suspects might have prior records.

THE DOUBLE SAW BY WAS DIFFICULT ENOUGH IN STEAM DAYS.

Here's a look at the maneuver, using a computer simulation.

Anyone who has ever carried this off in real life, or on a model railroad, where there's play value and a lot of cracking wise going on during the evolution, will have made use of, or at least thought of making use of, that trailing point spur the first train encounters to stash enough of the train to obviate all the to-ing-and-fro-ing that otherwise follows.  "If trains that are both too long for a siding have to meet, it is a very time consuming process, and something that the dispatcher will avoid at all costs."  Figure two hours, and that's with five people available on each train to help with flagging and getting the iron and connecting the air and all the other stuff.

Apparently, though, the existing rash of discouraging traffic by downsizing hasn't driven enough shippers away.

In October CSX Transportation ran two overlength merchandise trains at each other on its single-track mainline between Savannah and Augusta, Ga. The plan was to do a double saw-by — a maneuver as complicated and time-consuming as you can imagine — to get the no-fitters past each other. But that plan went out the window when the 12,000-footer tripped a hot box detector. While the conductor hit the ground to find the problem, the crew of the 11,000-footer was instructed to leave half of its train in a siding, then proceed to the next siding to await the 12,000-footer. Once it passed, the 11,000-footer had to retrace its steps and put its train back together before heading back in the right direction.

The idea behind long trains is as simple as it is old. Move your tonnage on fewer but longer trains and you save crew, locomotive, and fuel costs.

The savings can be illusory, though, if you take the concept to the extreme. In the CSX example, both manifest trains had to be recrewed. So did two locals caught up in the mess. Amtrak’s Silver Star was delayed 45 minutes. And, most importantly, the customers’ freight was delayed almost 5 hours.

These days, there are two crew members per train, the engineer, and the conductor, who is often rated as an engineer as well. Nobody to walk ahead from the caboose, and unless there's somebody from the mechanical department with a pickup truck available to help with the joints and getting the air, there's a lot of walking by a few people, even if you're breaking the shorter train at two sidings, thus creating a single saw-by.

Maybe one of these days the people who look at the financials will see what a false economy the long trains are.

Railroads continue to push the limits of common sense with megatrains. On subdivisions where long sidings are few and far between, the no-fitter trains extend meet delays. Even double-track mains aren’t immune. Monster trains can bog down the double iron by taking longer to enter and exit permanent and temporary speed restrictions. Megatrains also encounter more frequent mechanical problems. The law of averages says that the more cars in a train, the more likely there’s a bad apple in the bunch.

Given all this collateral damage, why would some Class I railroads continue their love affair with trains that don’t fit their physical plants? It’s because they care more about the operating ratio and investors than they do about providing reliable service.

The service design veterans I spoke with agreed it’s bad railroading to run no-fitter trains in both directions in single-track territory. It’s also not a good idea to run lumbering behemoths that turn a fast double-track corridor into molasses. The toll on service simply isn’t worth it. And the supposed operational savings are all too often offset by unpredictability of recrewing trains en route.

Those who do not remember the Chicago Great Western might be compelled to repeat it.

CAO NI MA.

Reason's Sarah McLaughlin describes "a pretty scary moment" at George Washington University.

Last month, global protests unfurled in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party's National Congress. Dissenters around the world called for dignity, freedom, and an end to "zero COVID" in China. At George Washington University (GWU), an anonymous group of Chinese students joined the protests, continuing their monthslong campus campaign against the CCP and its censors.

Because of the very real potential for reprisal against the students and their families both at home in China and here in the United States, their anonymity is vitally important—and closely guarded. But while they were posting flyers recently, a man approached them, spoke to them in Chinese, demanded that they identify themselves, and pulled out his phone and pressed record. Months earlier, some of their fellow students had demanded their university unmask and punish them. Their anonymity, so carefully preserved, remains on a knife's edge.

If you see something, say something.  The article strongly suggests that George Washington's administration and faculty are too pusillanimous to tell the Chi Coms what they can do with their surveillance.  All that is necessary for these Chi Com thugs to get their way is for Normals to do nothing.

What does an individual in an oppressive society owe his fellow citizens when he has the opportunity to speak freely? Does he have a duty to say something, even if it puts him in harm's way?

To most Americans, this may come across as an abstraction. We all have different ideas about citizenship, what it requires of us, and our obligations to other Americans. But these debates take place within our free society. The parameters, and the stakes, are different. The consequences we fear are usually social, not legal.

To China's politically dissident students, though, whose travels take them from Barcelona to Brisbane to Berkeley, this is a profound question. Their status as international students abroad grants them temporary reprieve from the CCP's most blatant and immediate forms of suppression and protections—on paper, at least—for their right to speak freely in their campus and host country. Those liberties, though, come with an asterisk. Chinese students know all too well that their activities remain closely surveilled even overseas.

So, too, can the activities of minor Chinese officials be surveilled.  Somebody publicly asking overseas students to reveal their faces and recording the protest is asking to be recorded himself.  Preferably by College Republicans, but any old passer-by will do.  It's not likely that the Chi Coms are sending senior intelligence officers to engage in intimidation; it's more likely that any minor functionary whose image ends up on social media, particularly if it's College Republicans or Young America's Foundation social media, is going to find himself reassigned somewhere out of country.  Patriots in Barcelona or Brisbane or Manchester, pay attention.

In addition, a person recording a public gathering has no grounds for objecting to other people recording the public gathering, and the proper response to a Chi Com functionary asking a passer-by to stop recording him is to say no; and whether that functionary persists in asking, or escalates, or not, advise campus security or local law enforcement what is going on.  Our turf, our rules.  Let us see videos of Chi Com functionaries moping off.

What might be spectacular is for campus conservative students to turn out in support of the Chinese dissidents.  Particularly if there might be students with a Marine or Special Forces background in the rally: not, mind you, to use force, let campus security know if the functionary gets cranky, but just to let the functionaries think twice.

IMMIGRATION POLICY IS TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE TO POLITICIANS.

Now that the electoral dust has settled, continuing Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, still fearful of a primary challenge from his left, hopes to get some sort of immigration amnesty through.  "We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome … [and] get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented there are here." That's an argument unlikely to convince anybody, as it reduces (the way economist Richard Thaler put it, en Español) to "We need more immigrants to pay pensions". The Social Security and Medicare trust funds are in trouble, but bringing in more taxpayers to work now to support current pensioners continues the Ponzi scheme, it doesn't fix anything.

CORONA WISDOM.

Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux continues to call corona tyrants to account.  Herewith a few.  First, "We're now all paying the terrible price for lockdown."

The true cost of this terrible social experiment is now becoming clearer. Health professionals warned at the time that lockdowns would have a serious impact on mental health and on the diagnosis and treatment of other conditions. All this has come to pass as surely as Rishi Sunak’s warnings about the cost. Excess deaths are currently running at about 10 per cent above historic rates, almost all from conditions other than Covid. By far the biggest contributor is dementia, a condition aggravated by loneliness and lack of stimulation.

It definitely wasn't For. The. Children.

The full cost of the Covid-19 school shutdowns will take years to understand, but here’s another estimate that will make many parents livid: If the recent learning loss can’t be reversed, it would equate to a 1.6% drop in lifetime earnings for the average K-12 student, or a nationwide total of some $900 billion.

There are instructive links addressing other topics as well.

THE FIRST TIME AS TRAGEDY, THE SECOND TIME AS FARCE.

Shortly after the coming of Amtrak, some Bright Sort got the idea of turning Washington, D.C. Union Station into some sort of Bicentennial Welcome Center.  I don't know if that ever worked, or if all your tax dollars paid for was an early-day multimedia display that didn't work very well, or simply a fetid indoor swamp.

Subsequently, wiser heads prevailed, and the station became something more like a station, and I was able to compare the retail spaces there and Nürnberg, although a complaint that I have directed at Amtrak elsewhere, namely, that there isn't sufficient waiting space devoted to waiting for trains, meaning passengers waiting to be allowed onto regional trains form queues that clog the shopping space.  In Germany, the railroad knows what track your train will be on, and how the formation is marshalled, and you proceed to trackside without waiting for station staff to herd you through the gate.

If you hold sleeper space in Boston, Chicago, or Washington you rate a lounge with free pop and chips and that lounge is available for Acela riders.  Station staff might escort you to your car before the herd stampedes.

The last time I was in Washington was before the corona tyranny, and that, plus Washington being the home office of softness on crime, has had consequences for Union Station.

Union Station had as many as 100 stores more than two decades ago. It’s down to about 40 retailers and eateries while more than half its commercial space sits vacant.

Calls for fire and emergency services show the range of problems at the station, including drug and alcohol intoxication, overdoses and assaults. Meanwhile, foot traffic remains well below pre-pandemic levels, with Metro and commuter rail traffic roughly halved, even as Amtrak reaches more solid footing.

It's worth remembering that the bicentennial is going on fifty years ago, and all many of these commuters might know is the current incarnation.

Those who pass through the iconic station — and those who once visited but now stay away — say they are hoping for another infusion of life into Union Station. The Washington Post spoke to commuters, business owners, longtime visitors and others to learn how its decline has altered their views of one of D.C.’s most beloved architectural jewels.

I mean, when the Starbucks has closed down and the bums gripe about being evicted at 11 pm, that's not good, and it's all self-inflicted this time.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Confound it, can't we get through a Super Bowl or two, let alone establish the composition of the incoming Congress, before we focus on the next presidential election cycle?  Absurd. <bangs head against wall repeatedly>.  For what?  "GOP voters should give up on the idea that Trump is a winner."  The correlation of forces is not favorable.  "Biden has been a disaster. ... Trump is politically toxic and a serious electoral drag."

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

A LATTER DAY "MODEST PROPOSAL"?

Mispricing tuition?  "Charging history or English majors lower tuition in line with lower labor costs could attract back students who have been abandoning the humanities, Fidel J. Tavárez writes."

As Allen-Bradley marketing material noted, "An 'extra discount' is simply an expression of a product's worth: you get what you pay for."  That might apply to those humanities majors, and it's probably a good thing there are no comments at Inside Higher Ed any more, as the schadenfreude coming in from Normals might overwhelm the servers.  But is Mr Tavárez serious?

What’s behind this decline? Theories abound, from the proliferation of turgid, incomprehensible prose in the humanities to the lack of job opportunities for recently minted humanists. Likewise, among the most common alleged culprits are the neoliberal university and its emphasis on “practical” majors as well as the politicization of the humanities. The most convincing perspective I have seen so far was put forward by historian Benjamin Schmidt, who suggested that “the plunge seems not to reflect a sudden decline of interest in the humanities, or any sharp drop in the actual career prospects of humanities majors. Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying—in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market.”

Surely, many of the available explanations have varying degrees of validity. No complex problem has a monocausal explanation. What is surprising, however, is the fact that commentators have missed an essential part of the picture, namely the structure of tuition fees in most American universities. By this I don’t simply mean the astronomical costs of tuition—although this is also clearly a problem—but the fact that universities don’t routinely price tuition for different majors in relation to what it actually costs to educate a student in any given discipline.

It's not that universities aren't rationing the majors already.  I have recollections of business schools employing premium pricing, and for years enrollment at the junior and senior level has been controlled by grades either by the college (common in business and allied health) or at the department level.  Yes, that sort of restriction incentivizes grade grubbing of the form "I really need a B (or an A) in order to continue in that program.  In addition, there are sometimes materials or technology fees in the fine print for the marketable degrees that might not show up in English or gender studies or even underwater basketweaving.  (You mean those reeds and snorkels are costless?)

But I repeat, is Mr Tavárez serious?

This is not a mere theoretical or ethical point, for tuition mispricing may well be affecting student choices to students’ own detriment and that of the humanities. In the interest of transparency, I should confess that I would prefer a fully funded, free public system of higher education. But, given that we are unlikely to distort the market for public education, we should go all the way in marketizing it. Allow me to explain.

I shall begin with a question. Why do economics professors earn much more money than their counterparts in the humanities (see, for example, the chart below showing the salary differential between English and economics professors)? The answer, as economists themselves would be quick to point out, is not a mystery. It is simply a matter of supply and demand. In other words, there is more demand for economists, both in the academy and in the extra-academic labor market, than for humanists. At some point, demand outpaces the supply of economists on the job market, which naturally leads to wage growth.

As if that "fully funded, free public system" isn't itself a distortion.  Moreover, burn your economics textbook if it doesn't tell you anything about the adjustment of supply to demand.  Adjusted for risk, professors of economics cannot expect to do better than football coaches, or than professors of English.  If it's the salaries of English professors he'd like to raise, he really ought to welcome the production of more mediocre economists.

Given that economics degrees command higher salaries and that it costs almost exactly the same to obtain a degree in any liberal arts field, it is no mystery why students are opting for degrees in disciplines like economics. If tuition is going to be equally high no matter what, you might as well go for the field with the highest income potential, even if it means abandoning a discipline for which you have a comparative advantage and perhaps even a strong attraction. This is inefficient and leads to deleterious economic and social outcomes. Would we really be better off were we all to become mediocre economists, computer scientists, data scientists, etc. …?

Yes.  In the job market for athletic coaches, the equilibrium job description is for a high achiever that survived a lot of screening.  The also-rans might be holding tackling dummies in youth football.  In the job market for academic economists, the equilibrium job description is more like a modestly talented teacher who can produce a few Minimal Publishable Units.  Some screening, but less risk.  The also-rans might be in industry or setting up their own consulting shops.  The job market for professors of English appears to have the risk structure of football coaching, but without the high returns.  Want fries with that?

A RUSH LIMBAUGH SKIT OPPORTUNITY?

Republicans now have a majority in the House of Representatives, and that might make inquiries into the corona tyranny more likely, or perhaps more aggressive.

Once upon a time, the Limbaugh schtick included faux Congressional hearings, and a skit might open something like this:

Dr. Fauci, today we are interested in the connections between the National Institutes of Health and sponsored research undertaken by American universities in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  I am pleased to note that you have submitted your resignation: this was the minimum you should do in accepting a modicum of responsibility.  Before we begin, let me remind you that Admiral Boorda committed suicide when he may have made a minor mistake.

That open sounds like traditional Rushbo over-the-top, although it's based on a real Congressional hearing.  Sometimes a parody song would follow, or perhaps there would be a skit sending up the formalities of a hearing.

The hearings ought to be an obligation of Congress, no matter what party has the subpoena power.  The Best and the Brightest made more than a minor mistake.  We start with "Shut down small businesses but kept big corporations open, and Forced you to cover your face."

SLIPSTICK, SLIDE RULE, NO PURDUE?

Sorry, no, wrong kind of boilermakers.

The boilermakers’ union that represents 300 railroad workers has rejected their tentative agreement with the U.S. Class I systems, becoming the third labor organization to give a new contract a thumbs down.

The union announced today that its members rejected the contract that had been based on the recommendations of the Presidential Emergency Board convened this summer after railroads and the unions failed to reach a contract deal.

That's a relatively small union, compared to what it was in steam days, and yet, there might yet be derricks and snow plows with boilers that have to be serviced, and the union is joining the maintenance and signal workers in saying "not yet."  The full name of the union is International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers, which might give you some idea of what other useful crafts might be affected.

The article offers no reason for that Brotherhood's reluctance.  Developing.

VIRTUAL LIPSTICK ON A FROZEN PIG.

My views on weeknight football are a matter of public record.  That post notes a number of ways in which the disease has gone beyond the Mid-American Conference, and in which the recruiting practices in college football might lead to bad outcomes off the field, including but not limited to dead footballers in Virginia.

Closer to home, beer at lower than cellar temperatures and circuses not in a straw house are the order of the day.

Barstool Sports held a show before Tuesday’s matchup between the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University in Toledo, Ohio.

The show was hosted by founder and president of Barstool Sports Dave “El Presidente” Portnoy, Dan “Big Cat” Katz, Kayce Smith and Brandon Walker.

“It was an incredible experience,” Walker said. “It’s 30 degrees and snowing tonight, and Northern Illinois students showed up and showed out, they were awesome. They were energetic. They were engaged.”

Katz said he was impressed with the turnout of Huskie fans despite NIU football’s recent struggles as the team sat at 3-7 before Wednesday’s game.

Whether the enthusiasts who came out for a chance to be on sports cable went to the game is another matter.

Fans at the show commented on the impact of Barstool’s presence at NIU.

“I think that it really brings the NIU community together,” junior digital marketing and professional sales major Brenden Ivie said. “It’s great for all of us to not only interact with each other, but also to interact with the individuals of Barstool. It brings a different experience.”

The hosts announced at the end that the show plans to continue covering MACtion in the future.

“We’ll (Barstool Sports) do MACtion every year,” Portnoy said. “We were talking about that on the bus.”

Now I know why the main parking lot at Fatty's was barricaded yesterday. There is an overflow lot, which is across a stroad that carries much of the game day traffic, and a few people learned, the hard way, that Culver's mean business about their lot, just east of the tavern, being for butterburger eaters only.

It's instructive, also, to note that Illinois style pizza leaves a lot to be desired.

Portnoy mentioned during the show that he reviewed the pizza at Lord Stanley’s Annex Bar, Vinny’s and Pizza Pros, all local restaurants in DeKalb.

Portnoy stirred the crowd with his review of Vinny’s pizza.

“Trash,” Portnoy said. “Lord Stanley’s was better than Vinny’s, and the place across the street, Pro Pizza, that one was eh. Listen, you guys got some work to do on your pizza, let’s be honest.”

That sample didn't include Pizza Villa, which usually places well in the annual ranking of pizzerias, and Lord Stanley generally do score well.  None of these outlets do pizza Milwaukee style, alas.

A BIT OF THE CHRISTMAS STORE WILL REMAIN.

Milwaukee's Boston Store used to be eight floors of full-service department store, with a bargain basement, and a toy department up high.  Christmas shopping there used to be a big deal.  Recently, not so much, or at all.

There will, however, be candy canes and silver lanes at street level.

Fiserv, the Brookfield-based financial technology services company, will move its headquarters to downtown Milwaukee.

As part of a $40 million investment, the company will lease 160,000 square feet in the HUB640 building, 640 N. Vel R. Phillips Ave. The former Boston Store Building is located along the resurgent W. Wisconsin Ave. and a Kohl’s department store was announced in July for its first floor.

Kohl's, which began as a grocery chain, is now a department store chain that cooperates with Amazon for deliveries and exchanges.  The successor company to Boston Store is long gone.

DARRELL BROOKS IS NO BOBBY SEALE.

One way for people who consider themselves political prisoners or otherwise unjustly accused to call attention to their plight is to disrupt their trial, in the hopes of eliciting an overreaction from the authorities that will build sympathy for their cause.

That might have been the case in the trial of the "Chicago Seven" defendants, including Bobby Seale, who disrupted the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and during the trial Mr Seale did a number of the same things Waukesha parade massacre perpetrator Darrell Brooks did.  The trial judge had him bound and gagged and chained to a chair, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young wrote a song about it.

The trial judge in Waukesha, who probably had more people emulating her look for Hallowe'en thanChicago's Julius Hoffman, dealt with Mr Brooks's antics by exiling him to a spare courtroom with a video connection, and putting him on mute.  She had a precedent that might have followed from the Chicago Seven trial to have him gagged, but the mute button is a kinder and gentler option.

That is, unless you fancy yourself heir to Crosby, Stills.

According to Laura Halbert, the conscience of Woke Wypipo in Watertown, Wisconsin, it was a travesty. She writes in the Watertown Daily Times that the verdict in the trial in which the defendant -- a lifelong violent criminal and sex offender -- represented himself, and had to be ejected several times for disruptive behavior, was "a racist, unjust outcome".

Because of course it was.  From the letter:  "Mr. Brooks’ actions were completely justified given the way he has been treated the past year, and throughout his life."  Use past perceived oppression to elicit a strong response, and hope for sympathy.  That's predictable.  What's less predictable is another observation from that letter.  "Do the members of the jury understand the meaning of equity in our criminal justice system? Why wasn’t Mr. Brooks allowed to argue for jury nullification?"

Jury nullification?  Has she just had some kind of mushroom?

YOU CAN'T CAPTURE THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS.

Power Line's John Hinderaker, in "Why Climate Models Don't Work", points readers to Greg Chapman's "The Dirty Secrets inside the Black Box Climate Models."  It's familiar ground to regular readers of Power Line, or of Cold Spring Shops.  All the same, it's useful to have the message close to the top in case new readers (for some reason, Blogger recorded a lot of page views just before the election, and daily traffic is still a little higher: thanks for sticking around, whoever you are).

Here's the key.  "The short form of Steven Hayward's argument is 'in a complex adaptive system it is impossible to capture the behavior of the system without fully describing it in your model.'"  You can't capture the movement of the atmosphere at the molecular level, or even at the basketball level.  Here's Mr Chapman.

In order to represent the earth in a computer model, a grid of cells is constructed from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the atmosphere. Within each cell, the component properties, such as temperature, pressure, solids, liquids and vapour, are uniform.

The size of the cells varies between models and within models. Ideally, they should be as small as possible as properties vary continuously in the real world, but the resolution is constrained by computing power. Typically, the cell area is around 100×100 km² even though there is considerable atmospheric variation over such distances, requiring each of the physical properties within the cell to be averaged to a single value. This introduces an unavoidable error into the models even before they start to run.

It's a non-trivial avoidable error: are there no tornadoes, one tornado, or several tornadoes in two counties of Iowa, which is one way of thinking about a cell a hundred kilometers on a side and however high the atmosphere is?  Or, as I put it in another old post,

The fundamental problem remains one of computing capacity. If you attempt to capture the essential elements, the complexity of the adaptive system we call the atmosphere puts the computers in a position of taking longer to anticipate the changes than it does for the actual changes to manifest themselves. Me again. "Put another way, it would take longer to extrapolate a century-long climate emergency on the computer than it would take for the emergency to materialize. And rewriting the code in something other than FORTRAN would not change that reality. Let the fun begin."

Instead, you have no tornadoes, or one tornado, or a tornado outbreak, in one of your cells.  Now, to get some idea of how wild the future climate will be, you have to initialize the cells.  What with?  Your best guess, because it's good practice to see how well the simulation stacks up against reality, but at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, there weren't a lot of weather stations.  If you could get something that looks like current reality from a variety of initial conditions, that's encouraging, but what you will get is chaos.  Mr Chapman confirms.  "The climate system is chaotic which essentially means any model will be a poor predictor of the future – you can’t even make a model of a lottery ball machine (which is a comparatively a much simpler and smaller interacting system) and use it to predict the outcome of the next draw."  But your grant, or perhaps your policy shop's future, depends on a prediction anyway, and off you go.  Perhaps that's permissible.  "There's nothing wrong with something being amiss in the models, as long as the models provide a better explanation of reality than a coin flip, and as long as the models aren't misused. There is nothing wrong with a scientific tool having large out-of-sample forecast errors, as long as that tool isn't being used as a guide to public policy."

But the whole point of the climate modeling is to have a guide to public policy.  Oops.

COME UP WITH A BETTER VALUE PROPOSITION.

A professional basketball player called Brittney Griner is on her way to gulag.  She should never have been in Russia, claims sports pundit Annie Costabile.  "The greatest women’s basketball players aren’t playing year-round, taking as little as a week to two weeks off between the WNBA season and their season overseas, strictly for the love of the game. They’re playing to make up for lost revenue because of low salaries in the U.S." I could say that's an artifact of wanting to live more like tsarist princesses or starlets than about low salaries, although the fundamental problem remains the same.  "The absence of a value proposition with general appeal continues to hurt women's sports."  That's predictably not how Ms Costabile sees things.

Critics of the WNBA, a league comprised primarily by Black women which is nearing its 27th season, like to poke holes in the value of the league by comparing it to the billion-dollar business that is the NBA. What they fail to take into consideration is how differently the two leagues and their athletes have been invested in. Look no further than endorsement opportunities for the first overall draft pick in both leagues.

In April, Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas detailed the pay inequity that led to Griner’s decision to pursue overseas opportunities. The max base salary in the WNBA is close to $230,000, but in Russia, top athletes like Griner were making seven-figure salaries playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

Might that be because the best Russian male basketball players are in the European leagues, or the National Basketball Association itself? (Were I still teaching the capstone paper course, that would be a topic for a keen student to investigate. More edifying than stadium subsidies?)  Or might there be differences in endorsement opportunities?  Michael Jordan said (perhaps apocryphally) "Republicans buy sneakers too."  Of late, I've seen LeBron James peddling AT&T phones, with a performer of European origin  playing Lily, the sales agent.  Too often, though, the women's sports leagues aggressively pitch their show to the wokest.  "Better, though, to think about expanding the fan base than to keep doing the same thing."

That's not where Ms Costabile wants to go.

The greatest women’s basketball players aren’t playing year-round, taking as little as a week to two weeks off between the WNBA season and their season overseas, strictly for the love of the game. They’re playing to make up for lost revenue because of low salaries in the United States.

Candace Parker, who played for UMMC Ekaterinburg from 2010 to 2015, said it was the lucrative overseas contracts that she signed throughout her career that allowed her to afford private education for her kids and her home in Los Angeles. Parker hasn’t played overseas since 2018.

According to Forbes, Parker’s endorsement earnings were $5.5 million last year. By comparison, Derrick Rose’s last reported endorsement figure was $13 million in 2017.

Rose was taken with the first overall pick by the Bulls the same year Parker was taken first by the Sparks.

How much money did the lady who plays Lily, Milana Aleksandrovna Vayntrub, born in Uzbekistan make?  Note, not simply from selling smartphones, from appearances in Ghostbusters (the remake) and other shows.  It's not simply, as Ms Costabile suggests, that our country doesn't properly value women.  It might be that the women's sports industry doesn't properly value potential fans.

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

They're not learning. The Northern Illinois women's team now open the game with a video explaining why their national anthem protest isn't a protest.  If you're explaining, you're losing.

So, too, might it be with the WNBA.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 19,284.

From the beginning of this series, a year and a half ago, we noted, "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."

The verdict is in.  "Sweden Wins! Country That Refused Lockdown and Kept Schools Open Has Lowest Pandemic Mortality in the World."  Not only that, the Swedes did better on excess deaths from causes other than coronavirus.

The somewhat less meaningful Covid death tally (per million population) does not have the same relative magnitude since different countries use different methods for recording what is and what isn’t a Covid death, on top of the fact, of course, that it’s a Pyrrhic victory to mitigate Covid deaths at the expense of higher excess non-Covid deaths. Take a look at Canada and Israel as prime examples of this – remarkably low Covid deaths relative to the rest of the world but very much in the worst half of the dataset in terms of overall excess mortality.

The emergency decrees for the United States taken together, as well as Illinois, remain in effect, if in modified form.  The emergency is over.  The emergency powers should be rescinded.

These posts will continue until the emergency decrees end.  What Matt Margolis wrote about New York corona tyrant Kathy Hochul goes for Illinois as well.  "Frankly, anyone who voted for her deserves what they get. These people put party loyalty before their own safety and the safety of their families and neighbors."  I accept the decision of the voters.  I retain the right to call attention to what they've inflicted on themselves, and it's going to be fun come January, when two years of inflation adjustments to the motor fuel tax kick in, and later in the year, when the sales tax moratorium on groceries expires.

Maybe we're seeing more consequences of the internal migration among states.  "Across the country, Republican state executives who made a name for themselves by opposing business and school closures won reelection with far more comfortable margins than their first pre-pandemic runs."  Note this, dear reader, corona tyranny plus corruption undid the sitting governor of Nevada.  Nevada.  Elsewhere, though, corona tyrants retained their office.  "But in Nevada and a handful of other states, there were referendums available on pandemic policy, and with the exception of Michigan, restrictionists were lucky to hold onto power by their fingernails."  No mention of Illinois in that article.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.  With local, state, and federal governments in the United States changing the way they count infections (and they might be rethinking how they classify deaths) I'm not sure how valid any numbers, even from a service consistently used from month to month, is.

The latest report from Sweden counts 2,618,688 infections, up by 13,822 from last month, and 20,825 deaths, a change of 418 from that report.

The latest report from Illinois counts 3,834,425 infections, an increase of 50,842 over last month and 40,109 deaths, adding 266 to the Pritzker Body Count in one month.  End the emergency decrees.

As of this afternoon, the state appears to have ended their tally of vaccinations.  The most recent tally of vaccinations gives just under thirty million doses of the various vaccines administered as of today, November 14.  The state also appears to have ended their count of the scary variants.  The last update to that page was in December, 2021.

At Columbus Day, the governor trailed by 19,436.

As Oktoberfest season began, the governor trailed by 19,467.

At the start of the academic year, the governor trailed by 19,611.

At Bastille Day, the governor trailed by 19,567.

At Flag Day, the governor trailed by 19,295.

At Syttende Mai, the governor trailed by 19,149.

At Patriots Day, the governor trailed by 19,243.

At St. Patrick's Day, the governor trailed by 19,580.

At Valentine's Day, the governor trailed by 19,533.

At the National Day of Service, the governor trailed by 17,062.

Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week was growing by  less, that is, until the ukases went back into effect.  The details for earlier in 2021 and the end of 2020 are on page 2.

YOU CAN'T ABORT REALITY.

It's possible, as Bulwark contributor William Saletan notes, that protecting access to abortion was a bigger deal for voters, particularly at the margin, than the people who were anticipating a massive repudiation of the Jarrett regency thought.

In reading exit polls, it’s common to look at the subset of voters who said abortion was their “most important” issue. That can be misleading, because a lot of voters who care about abortion also care about inflation, crime, and other competing issues. It’s more useful to look at the “major impact” group, which logically encompasses the “most important” subset and is relatively unaffected by other issues the voter cares about. In the VoteCast survey, 47 percent of respondents said the overturn of Roe was a major factor in which candidates they voted for. And this half of the electorate chose Democratic House candidates over Republican House candidates by a margin of about 30 points.

Apparently, many of those voters came out on Election Day, particularly in college towns. No surprise there, keeping Plan B and Plan C available for cavorting at South Padre and having taxpayers pick up the tab, that is, if the (unconstitutional?) student loan cancellations are still in place next spring.  Forty years ago, we had evidence of financial aid money leading to students spending on stereos and trips; these days it's probably gaming computers and trips, but the phenomenon is the same.

LET'S GET TO MODEL RAILROAD SEASON.

The eleventh of November is Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth countries, Veterans Day in the States, and the beginning of Karneval in the Rhineland.

The model railroad show season gets into full swing in November.  Here's a look at the Rockford O Scalers show that opened the month.

Look for some new developments at Cold Spring Shops headquarters as well.

Those of you who have projects on workbenches, what are you waiting for?

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Let's not be stupid.  "I think Donald Trump would lose."  Indeed, he's his own worst enemy. "A red wave turned into a purple puddle, thanks to an orange man."  Yes, we would have had gridlock but for the former president injecting himself into the 2020 Georgia runoff.

How hard is it to reject the false binary?  "They both suck and nobody likes them but you gotta pick one."  Still too hard?  "[Voters] looked at all of that, (meaning inflation and empty shelves and crime -- Ed.) and looked at Republican alternative and said no thanks."  And why does information technology get in the way of learning who we picked?  "It is ridiculous that we are still waiting for results, even if we were told to expect it."

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

MARKETS FAIL. USE MARKETS.

That's the policy prescription of several economists associated with the George Mason approach to political economy.  Perhaps that's the answer I was seeking on Wednesday, when I wrote, "One area that might be of interest is the prediction markets, many of which going into the weekend valued the contracts 'Republican House' and 'Republican Senate' highly. Looks like those contracts didn't pan out."

John Stossel has done the work.  "The Election Betting Markets Fell Short. They're Still the Most Flexible Predictor."

The Good: We have divided government. Since Democrats no longer control Congress, they can't bankrupt America quite so fast!

The Bad: Prediction markets, which I touted as the best guide to elections, didn't do so well. Yes, they correctly said Republicans would take the House, but they'd also predicted Republicans would take the Senate. Polls and statistical modelers like Nate Silver did a bit better this time. They also said Republicans would win both, but they gave them only a slight edge.

That House majority is still not confirmed as of this afternoon.

Unfortunately, prediction markets are more useful at making sense of the situation within which we find ourselves, rather than ameliorating the situation.

Won't voters ever ask government to LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE?

It's so sad. All around the world, we don't learn.

About the best we can do is vote to gridlock it. Rolling back the more annoying features of government might call for more disruptive measures, such as the bond traders bailing on Brandon's borrowing.