COVERING THOSE COMMON COSTS. Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur suggests that Seattle can find some more money to fix the streets by buying prescription drugs for city employees from Canada, or something to that effect.

Stefan at Oh, That Liberal Media is not impressed.

Unfortunately, importing drugs from Canada is not a long-term solution. Drug companies sell their wares for less in Canada only with the understanding that Canada is a relatively small market. Once enough Americans start buying their drugs up north, drug manufacturers will reduce the Canadian supply and the Canadian government will ban the export of Canadian drugs. Likewise, price caps in this country would only lead to shortages, a black market and less research and development of new drugs.

A more effective solution to reduce the city's exposure to escalating health care expenses would be to raise deductibles and encourage the city workers to impose their own price caps by making more choices about their own spending.

There is a bit more to this story. Presumably Canada's health authority negotiates prices for drugs at the avoidable cost of producing them, letting others, primarily U.S. insurers, bear all the common costs of research and development. (Or do Canadian taxpayers bear some of those costs through Canada Council grants?) United States patients presumably could get drugs for 30% cheaper if they agreed to freeze further development of drugs. (Who wants all that controversy over animal testing and double-blind studies, anyway?)

Mr Sharkansky correctly uses the term "expenses" rather than "costs." There is a difference. Think about all the expensive drugs available today that were not available at any price a few years ago. That is a price reduction reflecting a cost reduction (from undefined, effectively infinite, to finite albeit more expensive than a Metra monthly pass.) Think also about the improved performance of the newer drugs. By analogy, a Boeing 747 is more expensive than the Wright Flyer. But a seat on the Wright Flyer is not available, at any price, even to the pilot, let alone a seat with recorded music available (eavesdropping on the air traffic control on some carriers) and a bag of peanuts or a cup of coffee delivered to that seat.

NO WAY TO RUN A RAILROAD? Live from the Third Rail recommends a Baltimore Sun editorial on the continuing drama of Amtrak funding.

It's true that Amtrak has seen its share of mismanagement and made some poor decisions over the years. A recent General Accounting Office report pointed out that Amtrak has failed to bring down the New York to Boston travel time to 3 hours (it's currently 3 hours, 24 minutes). But even that is not wholly Amtrak's fault. One of the major delays has been the bottleneck created by track repair on a 50-mile stretch owned by Metro North, the commuter rail line. Outside the Northeast, Amtrak must cope with the freight industry's decaying infrastructure, something over which it has virtually no say.

These criticisms over performance also ignore how much Mr. Gunn has accomplished in getting Amtrak's administration under control. He's reduced the payroll by 3,417 positions to fewer than 20,000 today, and implemented better financial practices. It's been a back-to-basics approach that's emphasized refurbishing rails, cars and engines without pie-in-the-sky promises of new services or technologies. That kind of steady hand was exactly what Amtrak needed.

Once again, the real problem is the lack of a coherent national rail policy, a vision for the future. That's Washington's fault, not Amtrak's. Do we want our rail corridors rebuilt? Should Amtrak develop new high-speed routes? Should the states be required to make an economic investment in the rails? The country needs to stick to a strategy - instead of having these annual showdowns where draconian budget cuts are sought and supporters in Congress must ride to the rescue.

Three observations, in no particular order. First, David Gunn has restored some order to Amtrak by recognizing it is a railroad, something prior Amtrak chiefs have not always understood. Second, there is a coherent national transportation policy. It's called "don't spend any money from the highway trust fund, to make the government deficit smaller (or to punch up the surplus, for those who recall the bubble economy)." Per corollary, no money goes for other modes, either. Third, the Sun editorial writers have clearly not observed a freight train in years. The freight infrastructure is not decaying. Engineered for 70 mph stack trains or heavy Powder River coal trains, rather than for Hiawathas, perhaps, but definitely not decaying.

THE QUEEN OF HEARTS IS ALREADY TAKEN. The nine of hearts, however, is not. The dossier of Emory Assistant Dean of Campus Life Vera Dixon Rorie is being forwarded to Herrn. Schneider und Schwarz for review. Critical Mass has the details, and Tightly Wound observes,

The beauty of academic wankery stems from the fact that the wankers in question are completely oblivious to their complicity in the messes they make.

In this case, Dean Rorie has made her own case for the nine of hearts (via correspondence with the Emory College Republicans), to wit:

My office had offered to assist the College Republicans in planning an event that would bring a conservative speaker of your choice to campus. In light of the attached email and link it is clear that you are not interested in practing community. The information you provided to outsiders is the source of the enclosed personal attacts on me. I am rescinding the offer to meet.I will not participate in email name calling or personal assaults.

Trite, brimming with indignation, unlikely to trump a serious argument thusly, not worth hiding in the blind. As all the truly miserable failures are assigned, the nine of hearts is the weakest card left in the deck.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES NO. 78, with a list of upcoming stops, calls at Patterico's Pontifications.

WHAT DID I TELL YOU? "[F]aculty senates are notoriously nests of administrative wannabes and pusillanimous vacillators." That was last week. David at Liberty and Power reports that the Southern Mississippi faculty senate has voted 27-10 (with three abstentions?) to support the two professors being subjected to a drumhead court-martial by president Shelby (The athletic department is with me) Thames. Key observation: "Then it again, it might be like the faculty senate of my own institution which is notorious for serving the role as shock absorber for the administration."

Quite.

JONES FEELS THAT 2+2=5.

But here's the kicker: when I tried to actually teach the correct definition of a square, students refused to listen, because they acted like it was just my opinion.

(Reform K-12, via Joanne Jacobs.)

Obviously. Notions of squareness are historically contingent and culturally constructed. Ninety degrees at the vertices and at the intersection of the principal diagonals? A restrictive conception, possibly at one time useful, but, hey, this is the twenty-first century.

(That the largest returns to schooling are in fields that require technical training, meaning a grasp of algebra, geometry and logic, just doesn't matter to some people.)

A PEACE OFFERING FROM THE DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION.

A first step would be for the Vietnam generation - my generation, not by any means the greatest, but surely the largest generation - to stop doing something we always accused our own parents of doing. Let's stop fighting all the old political wars.

Let's admit, courageously and candidly, that our unbending moral libertarianism has really messed this country up. It's a valid gripe that the so-called "Arab street" has about us.

(Carl Raschke, via Milt's File.)

KILBOURNTOWN ADVANCES, JUNEAUTOWN YET TO PLAY. The team formerly known as the Marquette Warriors defeated Toledo (another Mid-American power not called Northern Illinois) tonight, taking one step toward a possible crosstown matchup. Dale Hofmann sums up the attitude on College Hill: "It's Marquette University that took the biggest fall.

Not only did the school plummet from the Final Four to the Forgotten 40, but it missed another chance to conquer its fear of UWM."

Hofmann demonstrates an understanding of incremental costs rare in a sportswriter.

The NIT has displayed more than a passing interest in the bottom line over the years, and [NIT director Jack] Powers' position would make sense if he had reason to think that Marquette would draw a throng of paying customers playing host to Toledo tonight at the Bradley Center, and UWM would do the same entertaining Rice at the U.S. Cellular Arena on Wednesday.

He must believe that the two crowds combined would come to more than what Marquette and UWM would get sharing the same floor while the tournament was picking up the expenses from two games rather than one. We'll see.

REPLAYING THE MID-AMERICAN TOURNAMENT. The Women's NIT field includes three teams from the Mid-American Conference, none of which are named Northern Illinois. Also participating is Florida State, with Northern Illinois veteran Sue Semrau coaching. It has been a long time since Northern Illinois put in four straight appearances in the Big Dance.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF PROTECTING THE TRAINS. Intel Dump (via One Hand Clapping) evaluates the benefits and costs of providing more security for the trains.

On the other hand, we probably ought to scrutinize the parts of our rail system that look most attractive to terrorists: densely populated stations (e.g. Penn Station in NYC, Union Station in DC), rail movements of hazardous materials, and critical rail junctures that would have a major disruptive effect if targeted.

Problem: it's possible to disrupt the service without going after the critical junctions. Amtrak vows never again: the as yet unsolved sabotage of the Sunset Limited in 1995 recalls the still unsolved sabotage of the City of San Francisco in 1939.

UNBUNDLING.

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.

That's today's sermon, from Rev. Donald Sensing. Be sure to understand the reasoning leading to this conclusion.

CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS calls at TJ's Weblog, who owns up to doing some peer review first.

DO I HEAR AN ECHO? From the weekend:

Add to that the obligation of an employer to pay person-dependent (rather than effort-dependent) fringe benefits including but not limited to health and unemployment insurance premiums, and employers will reveal a preference to pay their existing workers overtime and to prefer offshore workers with lower setup costs rather than to expand their domestic hiring.

(Been there, researched that, published the article.) Now, Professor Drezner links to a Business Week essay advancing the thesis, "The drive for productivity gains is the real culprit behind anemic job growth." Erm, in part. Scroll down.

The soaring cost of employee benefits is making companies increasingly hesitant to add workers unless absolutely needed. Benefits costs, fueled by sky-high health-care premiums and the need to restore underfunded pension plans, are up 6.5% from a year ago. After adjusting for inflation, that's the fastest clip on record. If a company can get three people to do the work of four, that's one less health-care premium it has to pay.

Then keep scrolling.

The pace of efficiency gains always slows as a recovery picks up steam, but no one is really sure how much. The question is how long companies can meet this big increase in demand without expanding their workforces. "We're getting up close to the point where firms will of necessity have to hire additional people to sustain the growth they see in the demand for their products and services," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told BusinessWeek. To judge by history, business cannot lean on the workforce so heavily for much longer

. Time also to consider the income and substitution effects of larger pay packets.

The real poser, however, comes early in the article.

What's confounding economists is that high-growth, high-productivity periods in the past -- the mid-'60s, say, or the late '90s -- have coincided with robust job creation. Consider that from 1997 to 1999, the economy expanded an average of 4.5% annually, productivity growth accelerated sharply, and 264,000 jobs per month were created. So why isn't the same thing happening this time around?

It is worth remembering that economic growth and productivity growth do not have to be bundled. There was a lot of productivity growth during the 1930s.

OH THE ROCK ISLAND LINE IS THE ROAD TO RIDE. "A high-speed train that's been proposed to link Chicago and Omaha, with stops in Des Moines and Davenport, is in trouble," notes this article.

Here is what the project has to live up to.

From the June 1954 Official Guide, here are the schedules the project must beat to have any chance of being called high speed rail.

   7    505                   506   10
 2:00  5:00  Chicago    1:15  8:30
 4:55  8:20 Rock Island 10:15  5:25
 7:55 11:40 Des Moines  7:15  2:10

Trains 505 and 506 are the Des Moines Rockets, train 7 the Rocky Mountain Rocket, and train 10 the Corn Belt Rocket. There were trains in addition to these.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Economics: the antidote for sloppy PC!" That's Newmark's Door, finding the missing Republicans in Duke's liberal arts program. He also reports on the corrective taken by an office pool manager who offered a worst picks prize without considering the incentives it set up.

(In case anybody is curious, the Illinois primary is March 16. Voters declare their party on the day of the vote. I intend to request the Pach ballot, although that might be driven by the local nomination of judges as much as by any state or national races. There is an interesting Senate race for the Donks, but otherwise not much happening on their side in Speaker Hastert's district, with the Presidential nomination settled.)

TAIL TRACK. Barring signal troubles, links to any posts of substance ought to work.

RULES EXAMINER'S REPORT: The time stamp on this post is not in the proper form.

BEGGAR-THY-NEIGHBOR. Minnesota politicians now claim to be losing money on the reciprocity pact that allows Wisconsin and Minnesota students to attend any state university in either state at in-state rates. This despite Wisconsin last year sending Minnesota $3.1 million to cover the balance-of-payments deficit, presumably arising account some 2700 more Minnesotans attending Wisconsin state colleges and universities than the other way around.

TURN OFF THE BUBBLE MACHINE. This dance music is for everybody, but especially for you and you. The Badger men's basketball team set a standard that the hockey team was unable to match, winning the Big Ten tournament and earning a sixth seed in a game to be played in Milwaukee.

The men's and women's brackets are available for your downloading and printing pleasure, should you wish to get started on your office pool.

The Duke administration have taken some (deserved) stick on these pages for some foolish statements about the lack of viewpoint diversity on the faculty, but take a moment to note that both the men's and women's programs have earned No. 1 seedings in the tournament. Might as well run a good money losing passenger train, if that's the window through which much of the public views the university.

Also on the dance card, Wisconsin-Green Bay returns to the tournament for the third straight year, while former Phoenix coach Carol Hammerle has just finished her fifth losing season in six years at Northern Illinois. Northern Illinois alums Deb Patterson and Kamie Ethridge have guided Kansas State to a No. 2 seed. Northern Illinois's athletic director has recently gone dancing at Nevada-Reno. Perhaps her successor will see some value in treating the women's basketball program as something other than a diversity showcase, possibly setting as an objective building a team that leads the country in scoring as it once did.

The formerly top-notch National Invitational Tournament (yes, I am that old) has announced its field, and Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Marquette both commence play in Milwaukee. (Why did Milwaukee become such a happening place thirty years after I left?)

SECOND SECTION: The Dance is the first topic of conversation on the Charlie Sykes radio show out of Milwaukee. Thesis: Marquette is afraid of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Although both Marquette and Wisconsin-Milwaukee play their opening games in Milwaukee, they will not play each other in Milwaukee, should both teams advance. Also under discussion: a revision of the old Milwaukee Classic, albeit with the Badgers, the Panthers, the Phoenix, and the Team Formerly Known as the Warriors as permanent participants.

EXAMINER'S REPORT: This post has been strengthened with additional cross-references.

OUCH. Alaska-Anchorage??? Taking two of three at the Kohl Center? All is not yet right with the world.

BARGAIN HUNTING. Just took delivery on one of these babies, undecorated, for a sinfully low price.

Now imagine one in hunter green with gold striping and lettering, and a script herald on each nose.

SECOND SECTION: Tim at Where Worlds Collide proposes painting it in the original Swedish orange. That comes pretty close to using fighting words in New Haven Railroad country. I had something more like this in mind.

UPDATING THE DECK OF CARDS. In the past week, the headhunting firm of Schneider and Schwartz approved two additions to the sheepshead deck.

University of Southern Mississippi president Shelby Thames, the ten of diamonds, continues to confirm his position by attempting, despite all logic to the contrary, to defend his playing of a weak trump.

Central Connecticut president Richard Judd, a miserable failure at impersonating a police officer, has been named the eight of clubs.

The following cards are now named.

TRUMPS
Donna Shalala, Miami, Florida, Queen of Clubs
Cathy Davidson, Duke, Queen of Spades
Roberta Matthews, Brooklyn, Queen of Hearts
Katherine Lyall, Wisconsin (ret.), Queen of Diamonds
Stanley Fish, Illinois-Chicago, Jack of Clubs
Graham Spanier, Penn State, Jack of Spades
John Shumaker, Tennessee, Jack of Diamonds
Peter Mackinnon, Saskatchewan, Ace of Diamonds
Shelby Thames, Southern Mississippi, 10 of Diamonds
Chester Finn, Thomas Fordham Foundation, 9 of Diamonds

FAIL
James Kaplan, Illinois Board of Higher Education, Ace of Clubs
William Walker, Auburn, Ace of Spades
John Snow, Oklahoma, 10 of Clubs
William M. Bulger, Massachusetts, 10 of Spades
Robert B. Sloan, Baylor, King of Clubs
Timothy Sullivan, Bill and Mary, 9 of Clubs
Richard Judd, Central Connecticut, 8 of Clubs
John Burness, Duke, 8 of Spades
Laura Skandera Trombley, Pitzer, 8 of Hearts
Doug Hubley, Bates, 7 of Clubs
James Holderman, South Carolina (ret.), 7 of Spades.
Robert Brandon, Duke, 7 of Hearts

We're still missing ten names. Thank you for your continued participation.

ACT YOUR AGE.

The people in those earlier baseball crowds, though watching a boyish game, nonetheless had a radically different conception of themselves than most Americans do now. A major depression was ending, a world war was on. Even though they were watching an entertainment that took most of them back to their boyhoods, they thought of themselves as adults, no longer kids, but grown-ups, adults, men.

Joseph Epstein, via Mt. Hollywood, offers some curmudgeonly comments. There will be another generation of young people who will have to face a serious coming of age challenge, not just yet, but eventually.

AN ECONOMICS BRIDGE GAME. Econ Log, not to be outdone by the ongoing sheepshead game, sits down with three other economists to treat a debate over the role of deficit financing in economic growth as an intellectual bridge game. But who gets to be the dummy?

TONIGHT'S OUTSOURCING ROUNDUP.

State graduation exams typically require ninth and 10th grade skills, far below what's necessary to succeed in the 21st century

according to Joanne Jacobs. That failure in the high schools sets up a lot of students for failure in college. Here's Dynamist's take on what happens next:

The 5.6 percent unemployment isn't equally distributed across professions; in fields with lots of layoffs, job seekers may in fact be highly qualified. But Tim's note captures the risk aversion that's holding down hiring. It also points to the unmentionable reason high-tech companies are looking abroad for programmers: When you're trying to get the very, very best--the top 1 percent--it helps to expand the pool to a billion Indians, not to mention drawing from an elitist education system that leaves lots of children behind but gives the geniuses unsurpassed training.

Yup. Add to that the obligation of an employer to pay person-dependent (rather than effort-dependent) fringe benefits including but not limited to health and unemployment insurance premiums, and employers will reveal a preference to pay their existing workers overtime and to prefer offshore workers with lower setup costs rather than to expand their domestic hiring.

There's more to the offshoring story than meets the eye.

So the sector that is supposedly most vulnerable to job loss from offshore outsourcing has actually created a significant number of jobs over the past year, when outsourcing was supposedly at its worst.

Professor Drezner has done the research.

WATER CONSERVATION EFFORTS. Whether intended or not, Marginal Revolution reports the United States is indeed trimming its use of water.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT.

Terrorists will succeed. Terrorists have succeeded. Terrorists and Terror will continue to thrive and to live ...until... until there is a stark moment of decision that comes to all the people of the Earth that wish to live lives free from terror.

At that moment, we will cease hearing from the current crop of bland pap peddlers such as John Kerry and his ilk about the need to “understand.”

At that moment, we will no longer credit the pundits and columnists who whine and report on the “oppression” and “despair” from which all this springs.

At that moment, we will begin to see very real and immediate demonstrations, on the home soil of every government on Earth that supports these insects, that there will be a heavy at-home price to pay for indulging or promoting the sick mindset of terrorism.

At that moment, there will be an abrupt end to this dilly-dallying discussion of “Who did what to whom when and why and with what,” as if the whole problem were just a night-out at a Clue Party.

At that moment, the war against terrorism will move out its retail phase and go wholesale.

Read and understand.

SECOND SECTION: Betsy's Page finds some posts sounding a similar theme.

BEDLAM AND CONFUSION IN HATTIESBURG. Years ago, the Bonhomie and Hattiesburg Southern Railroad advised shippers to "Save Time and Money by Missing Bedlam and Confusion." Southern Mississippi president Shelby Thames, the ten of clubs, continues to harvest bedlam and foster confusion. I Know What I Know, who knows he has a job offer, attempts to make sense of the confusion, by noting that the bedlam and confusion well might be sown deliberately:

Word on the street is that the attempt to decimate liberal arts at USM is very calculated and is indeed one of the reasons Thames was given the job. IHL [a state governing board?] had a very tangible agenda for putting him in there against protests from the faculty. They were operating under pressure from "the business community," or a handful of powerful people who have the goal of reducing education spending in the state by cutting duplicate programs from the various universities. They consider strong graduate programs in liberal arts at more than one university in the state to be wasteful duplication.

In short, Ole Miss pulled the Faulkner card, and they get to keep the "liberals."

The people who want to see this happen will not back down. In fact, they are rumored to be reveling in the chaos. They want pissed off professors. They want people with big reputations to quit.

The current situation, however, was something of a miscalculation. They didn't expect the students to notice that an English professor who didn't even have any classes this semester was missing. They certainly didn't expect them to take to the streets and catch the attention of wealthy benefactors who do not share the "vision."

Some of this sounds eerily like the misnamed Priorities, Quality, and Productivity initiative in Illinois, (a roundup of that mindset, with links, is here, there's more someplace, look for a Second Section later) which took as a maxim that weeding out graduate programs at universities other than Illinois at Urbana was in the public interest. To be sure, there is an imbalance between Ph.D. production and Ph.D. employment in the academy, but that imbalance is specific to disciplines, not to universities. Chris at Signifying Nothing proposes some rationalizations that make more sense in a smaller state (there are nearly as many four-year and graduate level public universities in Mississippi as there are in Illinois.)

President Thames, meanwhile, continues to mimic the railroads, albeit by seeking support from the athletic department rather than from the passenger service agents. Still no word from Brett Favre.

RUNNING EXTRA: Chris Lawrence explains that "IHL" refers to "Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning," a title that screams out for Generals Grant and Sherman to return and bring regime change to the state. The promised posts on the productivity follies mindset (see also here and here) earned Illinois Board of Higher Education chairman James Kaplan a spot on the card deck Ralph at Cliopatria correctly observes that the administrative follies that afflict the mid-majors are the likely future of the famous colleges, and recommends Robert at Liberty and Power's comparison of the Southern Mississippi master plan with events at Clemson.

Other points of comparison? Well, lies told by university spokespersons have become routine. I?m afraid that Lisa Mader at USM doesn?t stand out in any way. Clemson's university spokeswoman once faced a roomful of angry faculty members and calmly proclaimed that her job was to make the president of the university look good. She just verbalized what they're all there for. When are journalists going to realize that university press releases are invariably written to flatter or protect the upper administration?

That's just a sample. Read and understand.

THE PRINCIPLE OF MINIMUM DIFFERENTIATION. Via Milt's File, a Washington Post article about the crude content of many network television programs. Key observation:

Opponents of consolidation argue that the airwaves have gotten increasingly objectionable since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which cleared the way for networks to buy more stations.

Less clear, however, is how much consolidation is really going on.

The major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox -- own 98 of the nation's 1,349 television stations. Individuals such as Goodmon, and companies such as Gannett Co., own the rest, which carry network programming as affiliates. Stations not owned by networks have more muscle to determine local programming than network-owned stations, he and others say.

Presumably it is easier for a locally owned station to affiliate with a network (including PBS) than it is to create all of its own programming (Chicago's WGN is one prominent exception to this generalization). The problem, then, is not with the concentration of ownership, rather it is with the persistence of the four major networks, a legacy of the New Deal era allocation of clear channel broadcasting stations. Furthermore, the Principle of Minimum Differentiation simply predicts that a small number of producers will offer products that serve the median preference. If the median preference is for crude programming, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not with the concentrated ownership.

THE THREE EXTRA DAYS WERE FOR LEAP YEARS. Buzz Machine checks ye arithmeticke. Start at 11 September 2001 and count forward 911 days...

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Orthodox Keynesian policy in a recession would be to cut taxes. The Bush Administration has done that. Orthodox policy would be to increase government spending over what had been planned. The Bush Administration has done that, too. When a student hands in an exam that repeats almost exactly what the professor was saying in class, but the student still gets a low grade, then one can only conclude that the professor has something personal against the student.

Full particulars here. (Hat tip: Flemish Beerdrinker. Ein prosit!)

A WORTHY RAILWAY APPEAL. Britain's National Railway Museum are conducting a fund-raiser to purchase 4472 Flying Scotsman for the National Collection, so as to prevent the locomotive being sold to a North American or Australian buyer. The Superintendent endorses this appeal and will be making a contribution shortly. It would be fitting for Britain's most famous locomotive to stay at home; that's where all the preserved examples of the world's most famous steam locomotives are.

A NEW LOOP L STATION. Block 37 is not far from the Chicago River. The idea of a downtown connection between the State and Dearborn subways (which would unite the system; at the moment the old Metropolitan service currently known as the Blue Line relies on a deadhead-move only connecting track with a ramp to the Lake line) and express train service to the airports (particularly challenging without any passing tracks) intrigues.

A SOCIALLY USEFUL PRICE CAP? Wisconsin and Indiana limit the dollar payouts on non-economic damages stemming from medical malpractice. Illinois does not. Malpractice insurance premiums are much higher in Illinois than they are in the neighboring states, despite the presence of insurance commissioners in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, and despite any apparent efforts by the commissioners to cap insurance premiums. (Indiana maintains a patient compensation fund that might share the risks among the insurance companies.)

The higher malpractice premiums in Illinois are having the expected effect: Illinois physicians are moving their practices to Indiana and Wisconsin.

STEALTH BRACKET CREEP. Marginal tax rates are lower. The standard deduction and the value of exemptions have been adjusted for inflation. The alternative minimum tax has not been adjusted. The train wreck is yet to come.

PUBLISHED, BUT PERISHED (UNREAD AND UNRECOGNIZED) ANYWAY. Alex at Marginal Revolution wonders how productive the academy's emphasis up to about 1996 on increased output of scholarly publications has been. Key paragraph:

David Laband and Robert Tollison find that a large fraction of economics papers (26%) are never cited and despite large increases in resources devoted to publication this percentage has not changed in decades.

On the other hand, perhaps the problem is that these papers haven't been published sufficiently many times. Newmark's Door discovers the champions: two papers that were published five times each.

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND. Lynne Kiesling, recently back from the Peak District, has the straight dope on the persistence of spot shortages and price spikes at the changeover from winter gas to summer gas. The loss function of the government apparently places greater weight on avoiding burning the wrong kind of gasoline, thus refiners may not begin production of summer-season gasoline until the tanks of winter-season gasoline are empty in order to prevent some of the wrong stuff being burned and producing too much pollution. Sounds like a research project in there, comparing the implicit welfare losses avoided by the planners with the explicit welfare losses in the form of higher prices and spot shortages. There is probably a second project on the gains and losses from the popular view of new tank farms as noxious facilities not to be sited in anybody's back yard.

SOME KIDS THAT ARE CLEAR ON THE CONCEPT. It is my pleasure to present to you the winning entries in the Northern Illinois University Office of Economic Education Economics Concept Poster Contest.

This competition leads to the production of a poster calendar with the twelve winning entries in the State of Illinois. The 24 posters presented are the winning and honorable mention entries from the Northern Illinois regional competition. These come from a pool of 198 posters submitted by 17 schoolteachers, primarily in the northern and western suburbs of Chicago. I have been known to use some of these posters to taunt principles students. (Here is a fouirth grader who is clear on the concept. What is your excuse?)

RUNNING EXTRA. A graduate student claims the current first-year class can take the fourth graders. Perhaps this year, but we had an entry in a previous contest that included replanting trees that were harvested. You really want me to get Euler with you?

(Superintendent's hint: if you want hits, link!)

WHY GETTING INVOLVED IN COMMITTEES MATTERS. Insta Pundit links to some discussion at Cornell about the Rhodes Class of '56 Professorships, which appear to be resume-enhancers for fashionable leftists that involve relatively little involvement with the university. (Visit the campus for at least two weeks each year? No mention of having to actually supervise a thesis or grade papers or publish anytning.) It is telling that economist Richard Schuler notes, "I wasn't a member of the faculty committee. I wasn't in their heads. I just can't comment on what went on in their own evaluations." The only thing worse than serving on committees is not serving on committees. Most university bylaws include a provision that requires "underrepresented populations" have "representation" on university committees. In practice, this provision means the guilt-tripping whitebread Silent Generation leftists who make a career out of being campus politicians have lots of leftists of color to vote with them on such things as honorary degrees and distinguished visiting professors. The students and alumni are onto Cornell's game (their game used to be hockey, now it's appeasing armed militants) but the faculty committees have to have expanded information sets, otherwise they will continue to replicate their idiocies.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES is up. Bedtime.

ATROCITY IN SPAIN. Trains are not supposed to be targets for terrorists. Unfortunately, the morning commuter trains of Madrid were attacked overnight. Iberian Notes has continuing coverage, with a description of the trains and stations attacked and the operational tactics (no suicide bombers, expect more careful scrutiny of abandoned luggage in the days to come). Transport Blog, which provided the links, debates whether or not the security of the trains is a topic for consideration. At Where Worlds Collide, the sentiment is "it could happen here." That was also a topic for discussion on the late evening news, as non-passengers enjoy much easier access to U.S. trains and buses than they do to airliners. Captain's Quarters mulls the geopolitical possibilities, while Apt. 11-D recalls happier times in Madrid.

The Superintendent mourns the deaths of commuters and railroaders, and condemns the misuse of the railroads to make political statements.

ROUND AND ROUND ON VIEWPOINT DIVERSITY. Asymmetrical Information breaks it down, The Chicago Report comments.

SINGLE DIGIT TEMPERATURES. Just life in the Upper Midwest, even during spring break. It will change. The local custard stand is open for the season (Thursday was mint chocolate chip day), and if you want to see some snowflakes, visit the Bentley collection of pictures of snowflakes.

STOP CRYING WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL. Where does the Chronicle of Higher Education get these commentators for the Jobs column. The latest is David Lester at the Richard Stockton College in New Jersey. Bracketheads, don't bother. He clearly doesn't understand anything about coal mining.

In my 32 years here, I have never taken a sabbatical or a leave of absence. For most of the 32 years, I have taught more than the required load each semester, and for each of the first 30 summers, I taught two summer-school courses. Even when teaching summer school, I still had four weeks' vacation at Christmas and seven weeks off in the summer. Now that I do not teach summer school, I have four months off in the summer. Why would I need a sabbatical or a leave of absence? Coal miners, now they could use a sabbatical.

The deep mines of the Appalachians used to take a two to four week shutdown called "miner's holidays," which was an opportunity for the coal railroads to repair and refit the trains and the tracks. The strip mines of the Powder River Basin have more in common with excavating operations than with tunnelling. I think the professor's point is that the academic life can beat working for a living, and he does have a point there. But read on.

I went to the first graduation ceremony at the college in 1973, but I have never attended one since. I have not attended a faculty meeting since 1972. I found that I liked my colleagues much better if I did not listen to their silly comments in such meetings. I rarely go to division meetings (I belong to the college's division of social and behavioral sciences), but I do try to make most meetings of the psychology program.

There is much to commend here. The intersection of the set of campus politicians with the set of research stars at most universities, while nonempty, has measure zero.

I do not pick up the telephone in my office, and my voice-mail message informs callers that I do not check for telephone messages. Callers are told to e-mail me.

The above, however, is a bit over the top.

Academic webloggers generally agree with the commendation noted above; see for example Harry at Crooked Timber and Ralph at Cliopatria. Invisible Adjunct and Little Professor are less impressed.

RATIONALIZING A WEAK HAND. Southern Mississippi president Shelby Thames, the ten of diamonds, continues to attempt to justify an action that he might have gotten away with had he simply salted the blind. Signifying Nothing has the whole sad story, which now involves upping the ante and calling everybody else at the table dummkopfen.

Ist's nicht ein haufen Mist? Ja, das ist ein haufen Mist.

There is also continuing coverage at Left Pedal, a man who can shift for himself, and at I Know What I know, who suggests that est ist ein grosser haufen Mist. Ralph at Cliopatria is on the case as well.

ANOTHER CARD IDENTIFIED. Reader Donna Davison nominates Central Connecticut State University president Richard Judd, for plagiarism (although this appears to be of the Senator Biden carelessness in attribution variety) and for impersonating a police officer. Let's see, president at an institution somewhere below the mid-majors, already in trouble with the trustees, misuses state property (to rush to a fund-raiser??) Sounds like the eight of clubs, nicht wahr?

HAS AN INTERNATIONAL REPUTATION. Peer recognition helps. Thanks!

HE PLAYED A WEAK TRUMP. Southern Mississippi president Shelby Thames has opened up a can of whoop-ass on himself, which is what happens when you attempt to take a trick with the ten of diamonds. Opiniatrety has weighed in, as has Charles at Liberty and Power, who correctly observes,

It is sad, but true, that we professors rarely act in concert, even when it is a matter of our own defense, or the defense of the disciplines we represent. That has got to to change. The administrative elite that now runs most of our colleges want to operate them like businesses, which means creating a flexible and pliable workforce that can hired and fired at will.

It also means that the core functions of scholarship and teaching are likely to be neglected, which must gladden the hearts of educated people in India, China, Taiwan, and other industrializing countries.

Mr Justice Volokh concurs:

Academic freedom also embodies a tradition of internal governance, by which many of the decisions about the way the university operates are made by faculty, or at least with the advice of faculty. This self-governance is preservative of other aspects of academic freedom, but it's also supposed to be helpful in maintaining the quality of research and teaching as well. To my knowledge the norm in serious American universities is that the faculty get to make many decisions, such as hiring, curriculum, academic standards, and so on, and while the administration may sometimes veto some such decisions, and may take the lead in other decisions, the faculty generally plays a serious and important role (sometimes as the primary decisionmakers and sometimes as influential advisors).

If this is so, then the faculty -- as joint governors of the school -- must have the right to criticize the administration, which must of course include the right to investigate alleged resume fraud by the University's vice president of research. If the University is right that the faculty members whom it's trying to fire engaged in defamation (i.e., were themselves lying) or real misuse of university facilities, then its actions might well be proper. But if the University is just trying to silence faculty members whose criticisms it sees as disruptive, that's very dangerous indeed. Shared governance, whether in Washington, D.C. or in a university, necessarily involves some disruption and tension. Trying to eliminate that disruption and tension is impossible unless one abandons the shared governance project.

Amen. See also Ralph at Cliopatria with commentary and additional linkage. Still no word from Southern Miss's most famous alumnus, Brett Favre. (Perhaps that's as it should be. Shelby Thames is clearly no Warren Sapp.)

SELF-SELECTION AND VIEWPOINT DIVERSITY. The Duke Conservative Union (via The Cranky Professor) comes up with the Quote of the Day:

The ultimate irony is that by uttering such inane comments and thereby turning himself into a national laughingstock, Professor [Robert (*)] Brandon undermined his essential point that academics are smart. Thus, he cleverly managed to disprove his own argument merely by stating it. In fact, the entire argument, coming from a hiring committee member, that few conservatives get hired not due to any bias in the hiring process, but rather because many conservatives are stupid, also serves to refute itself.

Read the whole thing.

(*)Robert Brandon is the seven of hearts on the card deck.

FED UP WITH AGING HIPPIES? Cranky Professor recommends Boomer Death Watch, a clearing house for stories about the experiments against reality coming home to roost.

This funny story involving the Principle of Complements is somehow about sex, drugs, rock-'n-roll and the economic decline of New York City.

KEEPING THE GOOD OLD DAYS IN PERSPECTIVE. More moaning from the uninformed newscasters (excuse the redundancy) about the high price of gasoline. Tyler at Marginal Revolution has some information about what price constitutes expensive gasoline ($2.80 a gallon; if the Blogger archives are working properly, you read it here last year.)

The average price of gasoline during the 1950s was about $1.80 in today's money--meaning that during the period enshrined in our collective political nostalgia as Energy Heaven, gasoline cost slightly more in real dollars than the amount now being theatrically bemoaned as a "record" price. But wait; in the 1950s, per-capita real income was less than half what it is today. That means that for the typical American in the 1950s, gasoline cost twice as much, in terms of buying power, as today's gasoline.

(Gregg Easterbrook.)

The $100 bill left on the sidewalk is this: why does the transition from winter gas prices to summer gas prices continue to have this price spike, year after year. One would think there is some money to be made in the right kind of hedging and stockpiling. Or is the real cost of tankage so high as to preclude such strategies?

SEPARATING EQUILIBRIUM. Suppose for the sake of argument that people more likely to be neglectful parents have a greater propensity to abort their children. Does it follow that the children of more responsible parents have a greater propensity to be responsible? Possibly, where teenage pregnancies are concerned.

KUDOS. Chris Lawrence, Ph.D., mensch.

QUOTE OF THE DAY.

Some aides and close associates say Mr. Kerry's fluidity is the mark of an intellectual who grasps the subtleties of issues, inhabits their nuances and revels in the deliberative process. They call him a free-thinker who defies stereotypes. Others close to him say his often-public agonizing--over whether to opt out of the system of spending caps and matching money in this campaign, or whether to run against Al Gore in 2000--can be exasperating.

(New York Times article picked up by Best of the Web.)

It's just Senator Kerry shoring up his base -- his Silent Generation next-elders with their propensity to vote Democratic.

AN ADDITION TO THE DECK OF CARDS. University of Southern Mississippi President Shelby Thames has suspended and initiated dismissal proceedings against two professors active in the Southern Mississippi chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

Critical Mass broke the story this morning and continues to provide updates. Kieran at Crooked Timber characterizes the suspensions as lacking good reason. Phluaria asks whether a "fascist spirit" has taken over the academy (the Frankfurt School imported it, but better to notice it late than not notice at all). King at SCSU Scholars reports that the Southern Mississippi faculty senate has unanimously passed a vote of no confidence in Professor Thames. That in itself is telling, as faculty senates are notoriously nests of administrative wannabes and pusillanimous vacillators. Robert at Cliopatria compares and contrasts administrative arbitrariness at Southern Mississippi and at Penn State. The comments are worth reading as well, particularly this one noting that administrative arbitrariness in the mid-majors might be more dangerous, precisely because the usual observers of the usual suspects might not see it, and its success might embolden the usual suspects. I suppose that's why the blogosphere exists.

There are some sources at work in Hattiesburg that are on top of this situation. Planet Carlton has a number of posts, just keep scrolling. There is a whiff of a sex scandal here, and (in a moral dilemma for Invisible Adjunct?) a nice pay raise for an instructor who happens to be President Thames's daughter. I Know What I Know is also on the case, and in an echo of past activism, Southern Mississippi students have set up a FIRE SHELBY THAMES website.

Still no word on whether Southern Miss grad Brett Favre was ever a student of either professor (how's that for a gratuitous Packer reference?)

The Superintendent asked Herrn. Schneider und Schwarz to expedite a recommendation for a card for Southern Mississippi President Shelby Thames, and they promptly recommended the ten of diamonds. Schneider and Schwarz noted that the ten of diamonds is a relatively weak trump, losing to nine other trumps, which makes it a forlorn hope should it be the last trump in the Picker's hand with the game on the line, although it is dangerous to hide it in the blind, unless one is holding an otherwise strong hand, which President Thames is not.

Eleven cards to go, then we can play.

WELCOME, CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS READERS.

Cold Spring Shops offers continuing coverage of the efforts of university administrators to relive the collapse of the railroads. This week's featured post covers the misplaced pride in established traditions reminiscent of the Pennsylvania Railroad's string of common stock dividends. Previous posts note the university's passenger train problem (big time sports programs lose money on an avoidable cost basis), the mindless image makeovers (long before Dilbert), and the corrosive effect of continued retrenchment and deferred maintenance on morale, and ultimately performance.

Today is a particularly good day to look around the site. An ongoing project at Cold Spring Shops has been the creation of a deck of cards featuring the 32 (this is a sheepshead deck) most unwanted academic administrators. There is a particularly juicy story in progress at the moment.

If you've wandered in here in the course of your overnight surfing, the Carnival of the Capitalists visits Calallarchy. As these carnivals are a lot of work to put together, why not surf over there and have a look.

GET A JOB THAT AN OFFSHORE WORKER CANNOT PERFORM:

I propose we bring back vocational schools in a serious way. If I had my druthers we would do it spontaneously through a total school choice voucher method, but that is not necessary. We pretty much know by the beginning of middle school who is going to perform well and at what. We can with fair reliability identify those students who will most benefit by a college preparation curriculum, and those who will not. Let’s stop discriminating against those who will not and help set their feet on a path best suited for them.

(The Happy Carpenter, via Joanne Jacobs.)

And quite right he is, echoes of the tracking system notwithstanding.

Those who denigrate the skills of the blue collar man have mostly never done the work, at least not beyond a summer as a lowest-rung laborer. I’m a carpenter, and a general contractor, and I can tell you that those jobs are not undemanding. They deserve a lot more respect than they get. If employers could find young people who did not need to be trained to weld, to assemble, to do the thousands of jobs we need done, they would hire them. Most of my friends are small businessmen, and one of the biggest challenges we face is finding qualified workers.

He's right about the lack of respect, too. Note to the academic classes: the lack of respect goes both ways. I have plenty of fine colleagues who could never carry my airbrush, let alone my soldering torch.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Fish mistakes the symptoms for the underlying root cause. The social compact has broken down. Academics need to take seriously the urgency of the task of renewing (or recreating) that social compact.

Invisible Adjunct, reacting to reader comments on Stanley Fish emulating a hidebound railroad official.

(Come to think of it, the railroads neglected their side of the social compact as well, lavish taxpayer expenditures on new airports and new highways notwithstanding.)

GOING TO WORK ON THE RAILROAD. It's Spring Break, the Maple routine is printing out (how I ever took derivatives without this ...) and it's time to stand down for a little while. Posting will likely be light as well.

DE-FENSE, DE-FENSE. Former Wisconsin basketball coach Dick Bennett sets Stanford up for the fall.

PROCESS, NUANCE, FAILURE. Ayup.

I WENT TO THE FIGHTS AND A HOCKEY GAME BROKE OUT. Badgers in third place, whether this loss will communicate the right lesson remains to be seen.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Andrew Sullivan:

Two apparently unconnected events converged to split the country deeply in two. The red and blue states, on the verge of what looks set to be a vicious presidential campaign, formally declared hostilities on one another. All it took to set the tinder ablaze was a presidential announcement and the mid-week opening of a movie.

Mr Sullivan is conflicted by this development, as he sees an opposition candidate that is not serious about national security, although likely to be more friendly to some kinds of freedom of association that the President's base dislikes.

We knew already that these two countries existed. We found out in the last election that they are excruciatingly evenly matched. But what we are beginning to realize is that, even during the war on terror, there is not now any chance of a real reconciliation.

Nor is there likely to be, given the way by which the divide arose. On one side we see the people who got all the publicity with "Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh" and "Out of the closets, into the streets!" On the other side, we see the people who were not impressed by such displays of authenticity.

SECOND SECTION. Herewith a post by a person not impressed by displays of authority either.

UPDATING THE DECK OF CARDS. The headhunting firm of Schneider and Schwarz have completed their review of the dossiers submitted in the past few weeks, and have made the following recommendations.

Duke Vice Provost and English professor Cathy Davidson is the Queen of Spades, a relatively powerful card. Herrn. Schneider und Schwarz noted that the emotional argumentam ad popularum (in the Superintendent's view, an extended, hysterical cliche) about the self-selection of socialist-leaning people into low-paying disciplines has for too long been used to trump counter-arguments, with the effect of digging a deeper hole for the academy.

Penn State president Graham Spanier is the Jack of Spades, the second most powerful Jack. Herrn. Schneider and Schwarz noted that Mr Spanier lacked the heart to ask a failing football coach to step aside, whilst firing a professor for telling the truth. Such digging will very quickly move Penn State from the Big Ten to the Big Eight, although Conference USA is probably a better fit.

Illinois Board of Higher Education chairman James Kaplan has earned a spot as the Ace of Clubs, for his mischaracterization of the academy's mission as "ephemeral" and for his willingness to continue to bludgeon the universities in the face of rising enrollments and deferred maintenance.

For his willingness to bludgeon reporters in the student newspaper, Baylor President Robert B. Sloan has been named King of Clubs. Herrn. Schneider and Schwarz observed that Mr Sloan was willing to go public with his views, rather than conceal his position in the blind (on double-secret probation?) which would have earned him a position as the ten of clubs.

To summarize the deck, the following cards are now named.

TRUMPS
Donna Shalala, Miami, Florida, Queen of Clubs
Cathy Davidson, Duke, Queen of Spades
Roberta Matthews, Brooklyn, Queen of Hearts
Katherine Lyall, Wisconsin (ret.), Queen of Diamonds
Stanley Fish, Illinois-Chicago, Jack of Clubs
Graham Spanier, Penn State, Jack of Spades
John Shumaker, Tennessee, Jack of Diamonds
Peter Mackinnon, Saskatchewan, Ace of Diamonds
Chester Finn, Thomas Fordham Foundation, Nine of Diamonds

FAIL
James Kaplan, Illinois Board of Higher Education, Ace of Clubs
William Walker, Auburn, Ace of Spades
John Snow, Oklahoma, 10 of Clubs
William M. Bulger, Massachusetts, 10 of Spades
Robert B. Sloan, Baylor, King of Clubs
Timothy Sullivan, Bill and Mary, 9 of Clubs
John Burness, Duke, 8 of Spades
Laura Skandera Trombley, Pitzer, 8 of Hearts
Doug Hubley, Bates, 7 of Clubs
James Holderman, South Carolina (ret.), 7 of Spades.
Robert Brandon, Duke, 7 of Hearts

We're still missing twelve names before we can sit down and quaff some Bock beer and deal a few hands. Quit your mauering and send me some names.

THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE RAILROADS, CONTINUED. One contributing factor to the decline of the railroads after World War II was the attitude, held by many in upper management, that "We have always done it this way." The correct counter-argument is, "Look what it got you."

Invisible Adjunct picks up the latest from Dean Stanley Fish, the jack of clubs, who is now making the case that ignorant criticisms of the academy, even from legislators, ought not be received with "Thank you sir, may I have another?" That is a good observation, and Invisible Adjunct asks the right question:

But institutional viability depends on sustaining supportive relations over the longer term. And if academics don't even try to explain what they do to those from whom they seek support, how can they expect that support to continue?

Dean Fish, on the other hand, sounds like an up-from-the-ranks division superintendent: "We do what we do, we've been doing it for a long time, it has its own history, and until you learn it or join it, your opinions are not worth listening to."

Sorry.

While high-ranking administrators say foolish things about the lack of viewpoint diversity in disciplines with large reserve armies of the unemployed, you're not getting away with this.

While students and their parents can expect lowered expectations without consequences, you're not getting away with this.

While globalization exposes the failings in the workforce (via Milt's File) you're not getting away with this.

While 82 percent of the population fails to complete college, at a time when the premium for a college degree is as high as it has ever been relative to lesser diplomas, you're not getting away with this.

AND YET MORE ON VIEWPOINT DIVERSITY. Insta Pundit and Betsy's Page weigh in on a public forum at Duke University addressing the problem, if indeed it is a problem, of a preponderance of registered Democrats in some academic departments at Duke. (Because each state does its primary voting differently, a list of registered Democrats can mean very little.)

Participant Michael Munger, from the Political Science faculty, scores some points for his understanding of topological arguments:

Here's a true statement: ... every conservative faculty member recommended for by the literature department has been tenured. That's also true of every unicorn and every talking dog, so it's a vacuously true statement.

Vice Provost Cathy Davidson, on the other hand, makes a good case for inclusion in the deck of cards.

As several people have noted, low-paid helping professions tend to attract liberals. Is that a surprise? If part of being a Republican is belief in free market and capitalist values, why would you spend four year of colleges earning straight A's in order to go for six or seven years of graduate school in order to compete with 200-300 other applicants for the rare plum of a tenure-track job in the humanities with a starting salary of maybe, if you're lucky, $45,000 a year. In my years of teaching, I've had many students tell me they would love to be an English major but their parents insist that they go to medical school or law school or into business.

Hmm, why is there such an imbalance between production and consumption at those salaries? A hint: it's not the Economics Ph.D.s driving cabs in inter alia Minneapolis, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and New York City. A further question: why is it that in the standard academic novel, the head cases are in the English Department (or something related), usually not in Economics let alone Mathematics or Engineering. Must be something other than parental pressure setting up those mid-life crises.

Betsy's Page is unimpressed with another part of the argument:

You got that? Republicans are only interested in making money so they don't go into low-paying fields like being college professors. As a relatively low-paid (by her standards) high school teacher and Republican, I take a lot of offense at that remark. I would bet that there are many conservative intellectuals out there who have a deep interest in history, literature, philosophy and classics. Perhaps they don't like the way these subjects are increasingly taught on college campuses. Perhaps, after years of indoctrination in undergraduate and graduate schools, they become liberal or learn to hide their beliefs. But to assume that conservatives are not interested in subjects other than those that make lots of money is rank prejudice.

It gets better. There's a howling non sequitur at the end of Vice Provost Davison's statement.

So if we truly want to increase the Republican professors at Duke, we need to look to the short- and long-term fixes provided by other diversity programs. Short-term: Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute can start lucrative graduate fellowship programs for young Republicans. Long-term: you've got to get them earlier. How about Head Start for Homer? Programs in affluent gated communities so baby Republicans can learn the joy of classics, not the joy of derivatives training. Or if we want to think really big, we should consider a full scale redistribution of wealth. If there were an enormous infusion of capital into education such that salaries for the nation's very, very best college teachers rival that of our nation's top lawyers or doctors or CEO's or stockbrokers, we may well might have more Republicans teaching French. There's only one problem with that. It may require socialism to achieve that end. In capitalist society, you get what you pay for. In higher education, that may just mean Democrats.

Where shall I begin? First, there are graduate fellowships available from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Mercatus Center is doing some of these things, admittedly with greater emphasis on work in the law, economics, political science, and the like. Second, if there is a reserve army of the unemployed in the humanities, why make the problem worse by raising starting salaries? Third, why would raising the salaries lead to socialism? Aren't the private benefits to a university education still sufficiently great (if being eroded, as regular readers of these pages understand) to warrant raising tuitions and using those revenues to pay for the kind of attention good students deserve?

One wishes that these fashionable literary "theorists" would understand a few simple things. Logic and incentives, for two.

Herrn. Schneider und Schwarz, was sagen Sie?

EXPLOITING NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS FOR POLITICAL GAIN.

(Hat tip: Is That Legal?)

CONFUTATIS MALEDICTUS

Furnulum pani nolo.
"I don't want a toaster."
Generally, things (like this quiz) tend to tick you
off. You have contemplated doing grievous
bodily harm to door-to-door salesmen.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The color scheme is so Northern Illinois, too.

THAT'S THE SPIRIT. Carnival of the Vanities No. 76 calls at Dodgeblogium.

YOU CAN STOP EATING THEM. The Sports Economist, who has just earned Company Mail status, picks up a report that Jay's Foods is seeking bankruptcy protection.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: Animated voter guide.

HEH. "This man is an academic ninja, who kicks our butts and has little to no remorse." Details.

THE BETTER PLAYER WILL WIN WITH EITHER COLOR. But it will take longer with [just don't say Black.] Number 2 Pencil is unimpressed with the latest attempt by some people to get outraged over absolutely nothing, this time with the convention that the first player to move in a chess game has the White pieces, and the Black pieces follow.

Am I crazy, or is this very similar to Chris Rock's "Nat X" skit on Saturday Night Live, in which he plays a black militant who goes to any length to see racism in every aspect of life, and rails against pool as a racist game because the object is for the white ball to knock all the colored balls off the table?

Perhaps, although the gag is much older. Rowan and Martin'sLaugh-in had a skit with a white guy and a black guy playing chess. The black guy said "Who moves first?" and responded "Figures" when the white guy told him.

Sock it to me?

A WEAK SUCCESSOR TO BADGERBALL, with a tournament record for fewest points scored tied in a loss to Indiana.

MORE PRAISE OF THE BUDGET AIRLINES, this time from Tyler at Marginal Revolution. It doesn't hurt that some of the carriers understand gate management.

ANOTHER LEGACY OF THE DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION. Tightly Wound is less than impressed with mandatory praise of Rosa Luxemburg "professional development" for female faculty and staff.

If I recall correctly, the original women's movement was based on the idea that we were equal in ability to men and didn't need to be coddled, affirmed or treated as victims. We also didn't require all day conferences on diet, how to "soften our messages" or our need to find "balance" in our lives. Crap like this sends the message, intentional or not, that somehow we ARE second best because we need all this extra specially tailored "help" that the menfolk don't. In which case, titling the conference "Balance" is not only a misnomer, it's a pretty cruel joke on women.

Ayup.

(Her post does not mention whether participation is also mandatory for cross-dressers.)

JOBS CAN BE NEITHER CREATED NOR DESTROYED. There are, however, 776,000 more jobs now than there were in the first month of George Bush’s administration. (Hat tip: Captain's Quarters.)

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF PUNCTUALITY

Griff Teller's On Time, from the 1932 Pennsylvania Railroad calendar.

Marginal Revolution reports that Ecuador is beginning a punctuality campaign. Manana leads to losses equivalent to 4.3 percent of national product.

UNLIKELY TURNIP AS BLOOD SOURCE? Extortion against the Societe Nacionale de Chemin de Fer? Apparently so, for unknown reasons.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Why do the Inquisitors have it in for economists? Ultimately, politicians tell the people what we want to hear. They think that we want to hear that we are too feeble and victimized to cope with global competition. They think we want to hear that we are looking forward to years of dependency on government support for our health care and retirement needs.

Read the whole thing.

AMNESTY AND ASSIMILATION. Dan Drezner has a thoughtful and well-source post up. Visit his main page for more in the same vein.

FORT FISHER HAS BEEN TAKEN. Mike Adams, witty observer of administrative follies at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, now has his own website. (Hat tip: Number 2 Pencil.)

DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION. Insta Pundit points to a David Weigel review pointing out the capture of the Democratic Party by earnest Silent Generation types and recovering hippies, precisely the cohort that these pages have long maintained bear primary responsibility for the coarsening of the culture and the malfunctions of the schools. Captain's Quarters offers thinking along similar lines:

[T]he preceding generation -- the Boomers -- have to be the most self-involved, self-referential generation this country has ever produced. For the boomers, the Me Generation has never changed; they hold onto the Vietnam War as a touchstone from which they draw their power, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it's been over for thirty years and the resultant massacres proved them terribly wrong. This presidential campaign gives us great examples of this dynamic at work. Howard Dean, for instance, once described the 1960s as a period of unprecedented national unity that he wanted to recreate as President. Boomer-fed groups such as International ANSWER create protests with tired, retreaded slogans from the 1960s complete with the music of the day.

It's more precise to define this cohort as the younger Silents and older Boomers, and to use the Freedom Rides as their touchstone -- nothing quite so tedious as one of those people who still views all of race relations as if Bull Connor is lettin' slip the dogs, and nothing quite so pathetic as one of those people wanting to secure for American blue-collar workers the kinds of protections against overseas competition that Jim Crow once offered to white workers -- but the characterization is otherwise spot on.

As for the consequences of the nonjudgemental, relativist culture this Destructive Generation has wished to impose on the rest of us, Captain's Quarters also nails it.

[I]t is impossible to overestimate the impact that 9/11 had on this group of voters. They grew up on the ascendancy of moral relativism and internationalism, constantly fed the line that there was no such thing as evil in the world, only misunderstandings. To have that stripped away in one morning where 3,000 of your fellow citizens died, especially without a longer experience in life, is (rightfully) catastrophic to such thinking. Suddenly, this generation found out that there are enemies and they wanted to kill Americans in large numbers, and that a good portion of what they'd been taught was drizzly pap.

Amen.

E PLURIBUS UNUM. Hammorabi covers the bombings in Karbala and Khademiah: "Iraq will be united more than before and it will go forward stronger than before for freedom and democracy and prosperity" is his hope.

DUDE, LIKE, WHERE'S THE SUPERSIZE KEY? McDonald's are discontinuing the super size portions. This explanation is telling: "This is also an effort to speed up McDonald's service. The less [c.q.] buttons on the cash register, the more efficient the crew people can be." So says former McDonald's executive, Richard Adams, now a business consultant. What better indictment of the education establishment can there be than the discovery that even a dumbed-down cash register with pictures of the food items on each key can be too complicated for a McDonald's employee.

TWO MORE NOMINEES FOR THE DECK OF CARDS. Baylor University President Robert B. Sloan Jr. (via Andrew Sullivan) has made a case for king of clubs, and Penn State University President Graham Spanier is receiving consideration, possibly as a jack, for turning Penn State from a Big Ten university into a possible member of the Big Eight. It's a complex case but Herrn. Schneider und Schwarz will be up to the task, possibly with a report after the tournament game on Saturday.

BREAKING THE CARTEL. The Superintendent has long maintained that college football's Bowl Championship Series hosed the Northern Illinois Huskies and in general systematically hoses the mid-majors. Sports Law looks at some legal maneuvering behind the scenes leading to the creation of an additional bowl game. Hosing takes on a somewhat different cast if it becomes a conspiracy in restraint of trade.

A national college football playoff, on the other hand, would be a mistake. Not all fans crave a "true national champion." If there is a one-and-done playoff, the arguments will simply change from the current what-ifs to the what-ifs that follow from Lombardi's Conjecture (that's the one that begins "On any given day," for those of you on South Lake Shore Drive.) Just watch the basketball tournaments, soon to begin, and listen to the commentators explicating the mysterious #12 at #5 outcomes.(Hat tip: The Sports Economist.)

NEW OUTSOURCING PAGE. Go here (via Daniel Drezner.)

THE LUMP OF LABOR FALLACY? Jeremy Rifkin:

Herein lies the conundrum. If dramatic advances in productivity can replace more and more human labor., resulting in more workers being let go from the workforce, where will the consumer demand come from to buy all the potential new products and services? We are being forced to face up to an inherent contradiction at the heart of our market economy that has been present since the very beginning, but is only now becoming irreconcilable.

Huh? There are a lot of high achievers out there who would really like a day off once in a while ...

FORGOTTEN NOTHING AND LEARNED NOTHING? Ralph Nader:

Medicare is another matter. Its precarious future state is hostage to staggering annual price increases by the health care and drug industries which could be addressed by an efficient single payer health insurance system.

Er, Mr Nader, meaning no disrespect, sir, but are the common costs of research and development of drugs going to disappear just because the Treasury collects money from the taxpayers and picks up the tab? As an exercise, discover how much indirect cost return is involved in Government contracts for, say, hammers, or aircraft coffee makers.

HOME COURT. Northern Illinois 82, Ball State 62. Northern Illinois hosts the first round of the MAC tournament Saturday. Ball State gets a quick trip to Muncie and back to DeKalb.

BY THEIR FRUITS SHALL YE KNOW THEM. Nell Minow:

It is time for the people who produce the media our children consume to recognize that if they bombard them with messages that it is cool to lie and steal, some kids will decide that there is nothing wrong about downloading movies and music. One sin kids will always recognize is hypocrisy. Unlike the characters in their songs, movies and games, recording and film industry executives cannot avoid the consequences of their actions.

Read and understand.

NOT JUST A SIBERIAN THING. If you are a year-round resident of Wisconsin's Madeline Island, in Lake Superior, and the ferries cannot run because of the ice, some years the ice becomes thick enough to become a road. There is even a Department of Public Works project, pouring additional water onto the ice to fill the potholes.

HOW OTHERS SEE US. Academic Game compares and contrasts deadline pressures in the private sector with those in the academy. The Superintendent finds the academician's rationalizations less than persuasive, as noted here and here.

POSSIBLE SOURCE OF COMPANY MAIL. Welcome, readers of Skip Sauer's The Sports Economist. The Superintendent has little use for gophers either.

A NATION AT RISK. Via Econo Pundit, a view from Singapore about the connection between the failure of U.S. schools to teach algebra and the offshoring of routine jobs that make use of algebra.

Superintendent's note: most of what the observers of the school scene call "math" is really algebra, or calculations. "John is twice Mary's age. The sum of their ages is fourteen" is a calculation. "The real numbers cannot be placed into one-to-one correspondence with the counting numbers" is math.

IN LIEU OF A CARNIVAL. There is yet another showcase for weblog superintendents seeking readership. This one is called Best of Me Symphony, and Opus 13 is now playing at Ambient Irony. Next week's host will be Irritable Blog Syndrome, and the call for submissions and structures and forms (it's not just train orders that must be in the proper form, mind you) are at Snooze Button Dreams.

The most important rule to keep in mind is that the Symphony is supposed to recognize classic posts, meaning those more than two months old, and entrants are encouraged to recognize the classic posts of others. Should be a good place for train enthusiasts to hang out.

Why? Consider the old joke: How many railfans does it take to change a lightbulb?

Seven. Only one changes the lightbulb, but one has to make the coffee, and everyone else has to talk about how good the old lightbulb was, and how the modern lightbulbs are for s***.

A SPILLOVER INSTALANCHE. Welcome, visitors from Carnival of the Capitalists. The Site Meter tapes are rather instructive, there was a big spike in traffic shortly after Insta Pundit noted the Carnival was up, sometime around 8.30 am God's time, and the spike has decayed slowly all day. Thanks for looking in, and come back again.

KARNIVAL OF THE KAPITALISTS visits D. F. Moore this week. If you've come over here out of curiousity, there are now several posts on the ominous parallels between crisis-era railroading and the contemporary university for your viewing pleasure.

I had to modify the spelling in the header of this post as Mr Moore took the letter "C" where a "K" was called for. Was it President Franklin Roosevelt who quipped that the press could write anything about him as long as it spelled his name correctly?

All teasing aside, this week's Carnival is worth a look, in particular for perspectives on outsourcing and on immigration.