THE VALUE OF THREE MAIN TRACKS. I had some business in Chicago a few days ago, and elected to run-down my ten-ride ticket by using the Naperville Zephyr. The train I was riding, No. 1262, is due out of Hinsdale at 9.55 with additional stops including La Grange Road at 10.03. If the eastbound Illinois Zephyr is on time, it uses the center track to West Hinsdale, crossing to the south track ahead of 1262 and making La Grange Road at 9.54.

When the Zephyr is a few minutes late, it gets interesting.

The Zephyr overtook our train around Western Springs on the north track (as there are no platforms on the center track, it cannot use that track at Naperville or La Grange Road.) In the illustration, Chicago is to the right of the diagram. I have shown tracks cleared for 1262 as far as Brookfield, but the Zephyr will not be able to leave La Grange Road, as there is a westbound hopper train coming at the Congress Park home signal on the center track. There are grade crossings to the east that are not supposed to be blocked with stopped trains. I have shown the center track signalled for the passage of the hoppers.

The Zephyr cannot continue east on the north track as there is a welding crew working on the rails west of Clyde Yard. The best solution for the dispatcher: hold the Zephyr at Congress Park for the hoppers, then cross it over to the center track, where it makes a fast run into Union Station, arriving ahead of 1262. All in a day's work on the racetrack.

The ten-ride will likely get a few more uses. Although a different train line comes within 15 miles of DeKalb, its service is primarily all-stoppers. The Naperville Zephyrs will get me to Aurora fast enough to compensate for the longer drive time.

YOU CAN BUY TRAINS IN COLD SPRING. I noticed several hits looking for something called the "Cold Spring Train Works." It is a hobby shop in Cold Spring, New York, not far from Carmel and Patterson, where my forbears embarked for Wisconsin some 150 years ago. Might be worth a look on my next swing through New England.

GRANGE HALL. In the Corn Belt, that would be the location of potluck suppers and populist politics. In England, it's one of several locomotive conversion projects currently under way. The Great Western Railway had a penchant for assembling several different types of locomotives from fairly standard parts. With the right source of components, it's possible for preservationists to create a believable reproduction of a class of locomotive that had gone for scrap. One such project involves a boiler from a Hall and the running gear of a Prairie Tank to recreate a 6800 series "Grange" engine.

An English friend came west for the O Scale show in Chicago and he brought this picture of a project at the Didcot Railway Centre.

The locomotive is still recognizable as a "Hall" mixed-traffic locomotive with six foot driving wheels. But the first "Hall" was a re-fitting of a "Saint" passenger locomotive with 6'8" drivers. It makes sense, then, to take a Hall, of which there are sufficiently many that the movie makers can paint one of them red and run it out of Kings Cross Under, and re-re-fit it as the Saint project.

There is also work afoot to create a "County" class out of assorted parts as County of Glamorgan in honor of the scrap merchant whose staff cut up easier-to-scrap rolling stock, allowing numerous steam locomotives to be rescued for preservation or to serve as parts bins for the various replica projects.

And with that project comes an incentive ... roll my 1027 County of Milwaukee onto the ready track before the full-size 1014 County of Glamorgan is in steam.

SWEEP AT HOME? The college hockey tournament field is being announced, with Wisconsin receiving the overall No. 1 seeding and a first game in Green Bay against Bemidji State. SIEVE!

OPPORTUNITY COSTS. Counterfactual analyses are difficult, particularly where war is concerned.

General Patton to General Bradley, in the movie version of the Sicily campaign: "What would our casualties had been if we had still been slugging it out on that road?"

Michael Barone (via the rejuvenated Betsy's Page) links two studies attempting to quantify the consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein contained (assuming the no-fly zone and the oil-for-food embargoes could have been enforced?) but still grooming his sons for the succession and paying survivors' benefits to human bombs. One, commissioned by the American Enterprise Institute, is the work of three top-notch economists. (What does it say about the academy's valuation of economists that a Clark Medalist is supplementing his income writing policy papers?) The other is a newspaper column.

CONTINUITY. In the women's tournament, Florida State defeated perennial power Louisiana Tech. If memory serves, State's Sue Semrau was a first-year assistant at Northern Illinois when higher-seeded Louisiana Tech came to DeKalb to play the Huskies. Northern Illinois won that game. That "higher seeded" was not a typographical error. Northern Illinois had its hosting bid in on time. I chatted with some Tech fans who made the drive north, and they told me that the responsible persons at Tech did not get the paperwork in in proper fashion.

Michigan State plays like a pro basketball team. They play at half-power for most of the game, then put together a sufficiently good run to overcome most opponents, including Wisconsin-Milwaukee. We shall see how far that gets them in the upcoming rounds.

The local TV coverage showed DePaul avenging last year's loss to Liberty. The DePaul players had reason to be emotional with the recent passing of legendary coach Ray Meyer, who helped develop Doug Bruno. A TV commentator ... this was a particularly well-briefed group, complete with knowledge about Liberty's debate squad (apparently Chancellor Jerry Falwell understands that God Helps Thofe Who Help Themfelves, and he wants well-spoken advocates for public policy) ... noted that several of the DePaul players had lost grandparents during the season. The Lady Demons play at full power for the entire game.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Foreign Policy published an article by reverse-Malthusian Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation, who also provided a USA Today condensed version.

What's the difference between Seattle and Salt Lake City? There are many differences, of course, but here's one you might not know. In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs.

This curious fact might at first seem trivial, but it reflects a much broader and little-noticed demographic trend that has deep implications for the future of global culture and politics. It's not that people in a progressive city such as Seattle are so much fonder of dogs than are people in a conservative city such as Salt Lake City. It's that progressives are so much less likely to have children.

Conservative commentators have made much of Mr. Longman's prediction.

It's a pattern found throughout the world, and it augers a far more conservative future — one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default.

(I'm a bit late in noting this; check the past few weeks of Best of the Web.)

Dan Drezner and Kieran at Crooked Timber demur. For that matter, Mr Longman demurs in part in the longer article.

Patriarchy may enjoy evolutionary advantages, but nothing has ensured the survival of any particular patriarchal society. One reason is that men can grow weary of patriarchy’s demands. Roman aristocrats, for example, eventually became so reluctant to accept the burdens of heading a family that Caesar Augustus felt compelled to enact steep “bachelor taxes” and otherwise punish those who remained unwed and childless. Patriarchy may have its privileges, but they may pale in comparison to the joys of bachelorhood in a luxurious society—nights spent enjoyably at banquets with friends discussing sports, war stories, or philosophy, or with alluring mistresses, flute girls, or clever courtesans.

Women, of course, also have reason to grow weary of patriarchy, particularly when men themselves are no longer upholding their patriarchal duties. Historian Suzanne Cross notes that during the decades of Rome’s civil wars, Roman women of all classes had to learn how to do without men for prolonged periods, and accordingly developed a new sense of individuality and independence. Few women in the upper classes would agree to a marriage to an abusive husband. Adultery and divorce became rampant.

Often, all that sustains the patriarchal family is the idea that its members are upholding the honor of a long and noble line. Yet, once a society grows cosmopolitan, fast-paced, and filled with new ideas, new peoples, and new luxuries, this sense of honor and connection to one’s ancestors begins to fade, and with it, any sense of the necessity of reproduction. “When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard ‘having children’ as a question of pro’s and con’s,” Oswald Spengler, the German historian and philosopher, once observed, “the great turning point has come.”

In short, we're stuck with the same old generational morphology, even without the down side of the traditions that second paragraph catalogs. Parents may expose their kids to a preferred way of life, but it doesn't follow that the kids have to follow. (University of California president Clark Kerr did not anticipate any troubles with the large cohorts of students arriving at Berkeley and the other campuses late in the 1950s.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY. King at SCSU Scholars understands compensating differentials.

That's a bit unusual, for in many other places there is a competitive process whereby one offers a plan for study, grantwriting or other academic endeavor to be done during the sabbatical. It's not being paid to sit on your duff but to be reassigned for a year to something outside the classroom. This is of course expensive, but then most of us faculty in fields where there are ample private industry opportunities work at a substantial discount, for which sabbatical, tenure, and June, July and August are repayment.

To reiterate: redefine the job description and see what happens. I suspect my dean didn't take too kindly to my remark at a recent meeting that two months of salary for three months of work was insulting, particularly under the modified Demsetz auction that the university has been using to allocate the summer teaching "opportunities." On the other hand, I'm not happy with the public perception that all academic fields have the same sort of industrial reserve army that criticism and history do.

DEAD-UCATION. Joanne Jacobs locates an essay by Peter Wood, my favorite college administrator, who has left Boston University for The King's College in New York City.

I announced that the college would discontinue its undergraduate bachelor’s degree program in childhood education. I met with the freshmen who had expressed interest in the major and explained that to offer an undergraduate education degree in New York meant having to comply with state regulations. These regulations mandated that we offer dozens of intellectually vapid courses far below the College’s standards for the rest of the curriculum. Moreover, I pointed out that while New York (and many other states) sets all manner of requirements for undergraduate education degree programs, New York (and many other states) has also rendered these programs redundant by requiring every teacher to earn a masters degree in education to be eligible for “professional certification.” (A student who graduates with an undergraduate degree in education may receive “initial certification,” which confers permission by the state to teach in public schools for no more than five years, during which time he must earn a masters degree or leave the field.)

Why?

Schools of education mis-prepare would-be teachers in many ways. They deprive those would-be teachers of the opportunity to learn more important, substantive things during their undergraduate years; they require students to take hugely time-consuming courses of dubious intellectual value; and they inculcate would-be teachers in the educrats’ pernicious ideology. It’s an ideology that insists that virtually all of America’s social problems derive from institutionalized prejudices; that most knowledge is “socially constructed;” and that children are best taught by allowing their natural creativity to flourish, rather than by actually trying to teach the habits of self-discipline and mindfulness. Substantive knowledge and real skill in areas like mathematics, reading, and writing are clearly tertiary concerns at best for most teachers, because they are less than tertiary concerns for SOEs.

Tell us what you really think.

A message to fellow provosts, college presidents, deans, and college trustees: let’s ring down the curtain on the SOEs. You have nothing to lose but your least-promising students and a cohort of faculty members who veer between giddy and grandiose ignorance. The students and faculty members worth keeping can find their places elsewhere in your college.

That would also mean the end of the faux-ISO 14001 exercise called passing the NCATE audit.

WISCONSIN HOCKEY. On any given day, any team can beat any other team. Wisconsin surrendered a two goal lead to lose the semifinal to North Dakota (bringing back memories of a blown lead in the 1992 title game) while St. Cloud State outshot the Gophers in overtime. The Fighting Sioux (is that now or will it be an abusive or hostile mascot?) won the tournament and secured the Western League's automatic bid. Wisconsin 4, Minnesota 0 in the consolation game. Or was that the real title game?

With the victory, the Badgers may even vault past Minnesota in the computer rankings used to determine seedings for the NCAA tournament. Many expect Wisconsin (26-10-3) to be the No. 1 overall seeded team when the pairings are announced at 10 a.m. today (ESPN2). That would mean a trip to Green Bay for the Midwest Regional, where two victories would get them to the Bradley Center in Milwaukee for the Frozen Four.

If ever home ice mattered ... SIEVE!

OFFICE POOLS, CORRUPTED. It's the round of 32 and no Big Ten team has yet advanced to the "sweet 16." The Illini were bitten by a husky. Gonzaga disposed of Indiana. Ohio State is yet to play. Jim at Blogs for Industry live-blogged LSU's buzzer-beater win over Texas A and M; scroll around his site for other tournament coverage. Sean at The American Mind covers the collapse of the better-known Wisconsin teams. The Panthers could not get past Florida tonight. Former Milwaukee coach Bruce Pearl, now at Tennessee, has been excused by Wichita State out of the Dust Bowl Missouri Valley conference. (That would be a spectacular outcome in the women's tournament, with Pat Summitt apprentice Jane Albright, now at Wichita State after stints at Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, excusing the master.)

CROCODILE CALL. Tim at Where Worlds Collide weighs in on European and North American crocodilian locomotives. The Swiss would prefer that a "croc" have a jackshaft drive and articulated hoods.

If you like your crocs a more manageable size, there is a Czech company, E.T.S., that will sell you a replica 1/45 actual size, set up for three-rail or two-rail operation. If the inner motor is geared to the jackshaft, one could make the case that it is as believable a representation of the real thing as the live steam operators make for their pet projects, particularly if you wire it to draw power from the pantographs. But you then have all the joys of maintaining model trolley wire...

CARNIVAL CALL. Carnival of Education No. 72₍₈₎ returns to Education Wonks, who were kind enough to mention the poster contest announcement.

COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS WILL DO WHAT THEY PLEASE. Last week, the consensus among the weather models the radio and TV forecasters rely on was for a serious snowfall on March 16. My neighbor was busy putting the plow on his pickup truck as well as attaching the salt-shaker to the rear. He even staged a dump truck with plow attached as a reserve. The television forecaster was expecting the snow to start around 3 am.

I was up and about around 7 am on the 16th. Open the shade, look outside, nothing happening. A few flurries around 9 am. Weather Channel radar has the ugly pink band (freezing rain or similar pleasures) directly over DeKalb. Nothing hitting the ground. Check the university site for an update.

WHAT'S ON MY MIND: Dry air from Canada means bye-bye snow. Radar clearly shows it evaporating around 3,000 feet and below as the system brings in air with humidities around 40% in the lowest 3,000 feet of the atmosphere. That's just drying up the snow after it leaves the clouds. The snow IS heavy; in fact, I can tell looking at satellite imagery thundersnow is trying to get going. But, it is so dry halfway below cloud base that it is just evaporating it before it hits ground, except in the heaviest snow showers. So, I will reduce amounts to a dusting to 2". The amount of dry air coming into this system is very impressive. And needless to say, forecasts are busting badly all over the place. I expect the NWS to cancel their warning shortly.

Which is what they did. Around 4 pm some snow started sticking, but that amounted to maybe a quarter inch, all of which had melted by mid-morning Friday.

STARTING SOME NEW TRADITIONS. Florida State earns a tournament bid. Good going, Sue, thanks for keeping me in the loop.


The university decides to expand its illuminated-spear ceremony beyond football season.

Since its dedication in 2003, the spear has been set ablaze at sunset before FSU home football games only and it burns until sunrise the morning after the game. The new policy means the spear will be lit when FSU wins an Atlantic Coast Conference team championship in any sport, or an NCAA individual championship in any sport. In addition, the spear would be lit the night an FSU team is selected for NCAA Championship competition and will burn for 24 hours.

No word on whether this honor will be offered if a Florida State graduate rides the Space Shuttle or if a faculty member wins a Nobel Prize.

BYPASS OPPORTUNITIES MATTER. Jake of Tufte's Economics Class picks up an old Argmax article describing Coca-Cola's research into a smart vending machine that would lower the prices on cold days and raise them on warm days.

There's just one little detail missing from the story. Some twenty years ago, Coca-Cola decided to change the formula for its cola. New Coke quickly went from being the sole offering to sharing with Coke Classic before being mercifully put aside. Pepsi hired Bill Cosby to have some fun with the competition. "This is the new product, which we told you was the old product last week," or something like that. It's not too difficult to envision a similar campaign. "Pepsi. Same Price, Different Day," or something like that.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND. University Diaries reacts to perceived sabbatical leave abuse in Michigan.

What makes it even more difficult to justify sabbaticals, it seems to me, is the obsolescence of the professor-as-intellectual, the professor as essentially a monkish pensive type. Traditionally, the professor was not a publications-generating, conference-organizing, grants-getting, newspaper-quote-issuing dervish. She was intended to do the world’s slow and careful thinking for it, and her primary function was to share the fruits of that thinking with students and colleagues within the walls of the university.

No one questions the need for contemplatives to sit atop mountains and reflect to no particular end. But everyone questions the need of non-reflective careerists to reflect. To the extent that university professors look more like non-reflective careerists than old-fashioned contemplatives, they can expect people to wonder why they get to drift off to subsidized wanderjahren.

Fine, Michigan (or Illinois, where some of the same dynamics are in play.) Redefine the job description and see what happens.

NEVER SMILE AT A CROCODILE. The most recent Monday Train Blogging, which author DoDo notes will be offered intermittently in the future, focuses on crocodilian Alpine electric locomotives. Any electric locomotive with a center cab and long machine housings at each end suggests the eyes and snout of a crocodile, or in the United States, an alligator.

The crews of the North Shore Line referred to this motor, purchased secondhand from the Oregon Electric, as "the alligator."

Photo from Daves Rail Pix.

The original Swiss crocodiles illustrate several steps in the evolution of electric locomotives. The latest issue of BackTrack includes an article by R.A.S. Hennessey on "A Century of Electric Classification." (BackTrack's publisher charmingly continues to operate without benefit of a web site, let alone online content.) It focuses on the varying ways the engineers would design locomotives as well as classify them. The main design problem is housing the machinery. As Mr Hennessey puts it, there are two "main faces of electric traction morphology," which in North American parlance are "'steeple cabs,' with the driving cab centred between two bonnets;" and "'box cabs,' with a cab at both ends." The crocodile is clearly of the order "steeple cab." (The body has a passing resemblance to the roof line of a North American school house or church with a belfry.)

The variants of crocodile in DoDo's post illustrate a somewhat more challenging proposition, classifying the machinery. The canonical Swiss Ce6/8 has a guide axle at each end and two pairs of three driving wheels connected by siderods and driven by a jackshaft. That imitation of steam locomotive technology poses a somewhat simpler counterbalancing problem than a steam locomotive with both reciprocating and rotating masses. In When the Steam Railroads Electrified, William D. Middleton explains that early electric motors of sufficient power could not be made sufficiently small to fit under the frames. A larger motor above the frames also raised the locomotive's center of gravity, which improved its tracking ability. There were some very large applications of the jackshaft principle in use by the Virginian and Norfolk and Western in the Appalachian coal fields, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad's DD-1 (the classification is simple enough: a 4-4-0 steamer is a Class D; if you couple two of them back-to-back you have a D-D, even if the engineers will call it a 2-B+B-2) that made Penn Station possible. One example is in preservation at Strasburg, Pennsylvania.

The locomotive is of the order "box cab."

Another design variant in the early years involved putting the armature of the traction motor directly on the axle, the famous "gearless bi-polar" design. Imagine your basic science fair motor with one field and a two-pole armature, but the armature must be free to rotate relative to the axis of the field. (The whole axle must rotate at a constant speed going around curves. Railroad wheels are smaller at their outside diameter than they are at the flange. The axle tilts on curves, with the smaller outside diameter turning as fast on the inside rail as the larger diameter at the flange is turning on the outside rail. There will be a quiz later.)

Despite the technical shortcomings, the bi-polar motor was used successfully by the New York Central's S-motor, which the National Museum of Transport notes, "was the prototype for thousands of Lionel and Ives model electric trains" (including models currently available.)

The picture shows the motor at St. Louis. Another is in the Illinois Railway Museum collection.

The other application of the bi-polar concept served the Coast Division of the Milwaukee Road, a mountainous stretch with few opportunities for fast running. The locomotives also provided inspiration for Lionel, Ives, and American Flyer, although with a bit more artistic license in the rendition.


One bi-polar is in preservation, also at St. Louis. The BackTrack article uses it as an illustration of variations in wheel arrangement descriptions. I shall simply use 1B+D+D+B1, in the North American fashion, with each grouping of wheels pivoting independently. Lionel and the other electric train makers of the 1920s often scaled their "Bi-Polars" down to two powered axles so the engine would go around the Christmas tree. Most were painted orange or black. The real ones finished their careers painted Milwaukee's Union Pacific-inspired yellow with red trim.

North American railroads also discovered what DoDo noted about the safety margin those machinery hoods provided. The Pennsylvania Railroad modified their P5a motors from box cabs to what we call "streamlined steeple-cab" design after a fatal grade crossing accident. The modified version has crocodilian features.

Support the Fallen Flags site.

The better-known GG-1 was designed from the beginning as a streamlined steeple cab type. A few remain in preservation, including one at the Illinois Railway Museum that has been repainted into proper Pennsylvania pinstripes and given its proper number 4927 back.


But is it correct to refer to any steeple-cab locomotive as a "crocodile?" In the United States, the steeple cab design dates to the earliest days of electric railroading, with a plant switcher built for the Ponemah Mills of Taftville, Connecticut, in preservation near New Haven.


Steeple-cab locomotives still provide electric freight service for the Iowa Traction, and less frequently for the East Troy Electric Railroad.

Emery, Iowa.

On shed at East Troy, Wisconsin.

But are all steeple-cabs crocodilians? The Bernina crocodile, although it looks like East Troy's L-8,


also a snowplow motor, the Bernina crocodile clearly has equipment hoods that pivot independently of the cab.

If the standard for crocodilian electric locomotive includes snouts that pivot independently of the cab (adding to the reptilian nature of the beast,) there is a North American candidate, the Illinois Terminal Class D freight motor.

This picture, from Dave Mewhinney, illustrates the articulation perfectly.

(Cross-posted at European Tribune)

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Wisconsin transportation secretary Frank Busalacchi.

Actually, I was kind of addicted to passenger rail even before I went to Spain. Because, quite honestly, this Amtrak service that we’ve got between Milwaukee and Chicago is one of the biggest success stories in the entire country.

Yes.

DEVELOPING YOUR JIVE DETECTOR. The more things change, notes Stanley Katz, the more clear some fundamental truths become.

We are also increasingly uncertain about what counts as liberal education. On the one hand, we seem to have too much to teach; on the other, we worry about offending some students (and their parents) by speaking openly and honestly about controversial matters. And, although this is hard to substantiate, it seems to me that we Americans have a fear of asking too much of our adolescent children (at least academically, if not in terms of all the other demands we make on their time and energy that sap their focus), and so we have deferred to college the kinds of aggressive and searching education that our youngsters need for their full intellectual development.

(Via Milt Rosenberg. Read and understand.)

ICE DANCING. Wisconsin's women's hockey team secures an automatic bid with a 4-1 win over Minnesota. SIEVE!

CARNIVAL CALL. This week's Carnival of the Capitalists calls at Pro HipHop. The proprietor illustrated the carnival with an Editor's Choice from the Poster Contest. Thanks!

COMPANY MAIL, OR OPPOSITION RESEARCH? National Review launches Phi Beta Cons, which it bills as "The Right Take on Higher Ed." The first few posts appear to be judging much of higher education by the radicalism of some education colleges and the industrial reserve army in the humanities.

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION. Take the largest corporations, ranked by capitalization in 1959. Set aside the oil companies. How many of those corporations are in the 2006 top ten? Only one, and its 2006 product line is very different from its 1959 offerings. Oil is another matter; apparently the Standard Oil Trust of New Jersey will be reborn sometime after the Second Coming of Ma Bell. King at SCSU Scholars has some pertinent questions for those who would interpret the numbers as heralding the decline and fall of the U.S. economy.

DO YOU HAVE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO ME WHINE? Marginal Utility hosts the Second Whining Carnival, including one arcade devoted to academic whines. It appears as though observers of the basketball tournament are also engaged in whining about the snubbing of certain large conferences and the seeding of certain underachieving teams.

CONTEMPLATING THE NEXT FIELD TRIP. The former Chicago and North Western station in Racine has been rebuilt (Flash video) as a bus terminal. There is a line of the Racine bus system that connects, loosely, with the Hiawatha at Sturtevant. The new Sturtevant station continues to take shape. Perhaps when the new station is open there will be an opportunity to report on the public transit in Racine.

RECONSIDERING SOCIALIZATION. In Racine, school administrators would like to dilute the poverty rate among any school's students.

"Studies have found that the positive benefits of racial integration, in terms of achievement by blacks, came not from black children sitting next to white children, but from poor children being exposed to the culture of a predominantly middle-class school," Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and author of "The Remedy: Race, Class, and Affirmative Action," wrote in Principal magazine in May 2000.

Gosh, somebody might recognize that "bourgeois" isn't a dirty word.

STINKBOATERS ARE CERTIFIABLE. That's obvious to any Laser sailor. This proposal is somewhat more serious.

Many thousands of future boaters would be banned from driving powerboats and personal watercraft unless they complete state-sanctioned boating safety courses under legislation awaiting Gov. Jim Doyle's signature.

The impetus for the legislation is a fatal accident on Lake Delton in which an inexperienced Illinois jet-skier ran down an inner-tuber. Yes, I know, "inexperienced Illinois jet-skier" is a long-winded way of saying "parvenu." But therein lies the problem. Will Wisconsin's lake safety patrols be able to enforce such laws against, say, youngsters operating powerboats with an IL or MC prefix to their hull numbers?

SWIFT OF FOOT IS HIAWATHA. It's Spring Break. I want a mental health day. Solution: drive to Elburn to pick up the 8.25 all-stopper to Chicago. The train fills up with families, many wearing green. Chicago is going to make St. Patrick's Day into a week, apparently, with both the downtown parade and the South Side parade stepping off. A number of the kids wanted to see the city put the orange compound into the river to turn it green (next you'll tell me that Green River starts with Fanta Orange as a feedstock.)

I had different plans. A somewhat late-running local (and some people may have been left behind even at that ... not everybody has twigged to the fact that the old C&NW lines run left-handed, and there were a few freight trains in the way) and a bit of dilatory service at a coffee shop make for an exciting connection to the 10.20 Hiawatha, train 333. Consist: Genesis diesel 76, Horizon leg-rest coach 51001, Horizon high-density coaches 54527, 54000, 54510, cabbage car 90200. On time start. 85 minutes later, I'm stepping down onto the platform in Milwaukee, and I wasn't the first person off the train. The sound of bagpipes fills the air. Although Milwaukee is about as Irish as Fred Usinger, the locals are getting ready for a St. Patrick's Day parade, doubling as the warm-up for the selection show parties that will occupy Sunday and Monday? I stick around and watch. Lots of locals are wearing green, often with PACKERS on it. A kid who was a three year old playmate and sparring partner has grown up to become "Irishman of the Year." Good on ya, John. The media sponsors include The Shepherd Express, the latest upholder of the left-indie newspaper tradition in Milwaukee, and The Onion, which, despite moving the editorial offices to New York City, still sells enough local advertising to warrant free distribution in the Milwaukee area, including at Real Chili. The local issue of The Onion included the parade announcement, and news that Milwaukee also attempted to turn the Milwaukee River green. Couldn't tell. Let the flatlanders do that. I bet neither of the Chicago parades had an advance guard of Harleys. (I took the real camera along. There may be illustrations later. Film has to go to the lab first.) The showpiece of these parades is the local Irish dance academies. It's Wisconsin, so some of them sport warmup suits in cardinal and white, and others are wearing what resembles Prussian blue. But what's with the ultra-frizzy hair, girls?

I did get some writing done, as well, in the Frank P. Zeidler Reading Room at the Milwaukee Public Library. The biography of Mr Zeidler, who served as mayor from 1948 to 1960 on the Socialist platform, does not mention that he was instrumental in organizing the Model Railroad Club of Milwaukee, a pioneer O Gauge organization.

The equipment from 333 made a round trip to Chicago and return and was waiting for me to board the 5.45 Hiawatha, Train 340. I took advantage of the opportunity to nap, thus no detailed time log. Despite occasional rain, the rail was dry at departure time, with the Allen-Bradley thermometer reading 50 degrees (F). Light load with little traffic on or off at the airport or Sturtevant. On-time departure at 17:45:00 by my watch, Glenview 18:45, stop Chicago 19:08:46. Time to check out the Elephant and Castle on Adams and grab a quick supper at North Western Station, then head home. Union Pacific still having trouble keeping freight trains out of the way of commuter trains. (Might the rest of the railroad run more precisely if the dispatchers and freight crews had more respect for "must clear the scheduled time of first class trains?")

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE. The current president of the Lionel Corporation comments on the ongoing legal battle between Lionel and K-Line. I have not been following this very closely, although Lionel have obtained relief for K-Line's use of Lionel technology.

YOUNGSTERS CLEAR ON THE CONCEPT. One of the pleasures of operating the Office of Economic Education at Northern Illinois University is the opportunity to run the annual Economics Concepts Poster Contest. The winning and honorable mention entries in the 2005-2006 Regional competition are now available for your viewing pleasure.


Do we have some future game theorists among the winners?

THE RETENTION POND IS POLLUTED. The Fordham Foundation's Chester Finn wonders why taxpayers should pay for high school twice. (Via Joanne Jacobs. The comments suggest they are beginning to catch on, at a mid-major no less.) In higher education,

Lots of faculty and staff members have jobs that depend on the persistence, even the growth, of remedial (or “developmental”) courses, and plenty of university revenues derive from state subsidies and tuition payments for those programs. Uncle Sam contributes as well, via a host of programs (e.g., the TRIO programs) that underwrite remediation, and the private sector, too, contains many companies that make money by coaching, tutoring, and otherwise helping equip their clients with the skills and knowledge that the regular schools have failed to impart.

In the common schools,

[S]tate officials are understandably nervous about toughening K-12 academic standards at a time when there’s plenty of grumping (including from leaders of minority groups) about how hard it is to reach today’s standards, how many kids are dropping out, and how punitive it would be to expect tougher standards.

Constrained Vision suggests that affirmative-action efforts in higher education are doomed absent precisely those standards.

If you want more black students in college, you need better K-12 education. You need to fix the inner-city school districts where three-quarters of black boys fail to graduate high school. Colleges may be able to soften their admission criteria to admit blacks with lower GPAs or SAT scores, as Wesleyan has done, but they can't relax their standards enough to admit high school dropouts.

Given the shortcomings of the common schools, it's not clear to me why universal college ought be the objective, as Mr Finn appears to believe.

[D]espite ample evidence to the contrary, poll after poll shows many Americans unconvinced that everybody needs to be ready for college. Hence the continuing popularity of high-school vocational education and the reluctance to install a true college-preparatory program as the “default” curriculum. (A few states, such as Arkansas and Texas, have tried to do so anyway, although their notion of college prep may only superficially resemble their universities’ expectations.)

Many university administrators notion of college only superficially resembles their faculties' expectations. But perhaps the state legislature that first votes not to subsidize remediation in college will have the same salutary effect the first employer to bypass the job fair and hire directly out of high school rather than attempt to make sense of inflated grades will.

How much paying for the same material twice is there? King at SCSU Scholars attempts to quantify his university's mathematics arithmetic remediation efforts.

We admit about 2200 new entering freshmen a year, so you can see that about a third need at least some remediation ... So taxpayers are paying nearly $650,000 for getting these students up to a level of math that would let them take ... general education math at a college level, which is more than a bit short of calculus. Students not completing these classes -- a significant percentage -- must retake, and pay again, as does the taxpayer.

Were there graduation exams in high school written as tests of college readiness, it would put out of business programs like our Division of General Studies. When universities have a harder time filling their entering classes with qualifying students, it's not unusual to see DGS enrollments grow.

And memoranda alerting faculty to the existence of the support services proliferate?

I repeat: the public outcry over the failure of the universities to provide the higher education WILL be our undoing. Ward Churchill and Eve Ensler? Sideshow. Research delays the grading of papers? Big deal. Despite remediation, graduates are unable to perform simple tasks? Trouble.

THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY. Unlocked Wordhoard discovers a little-known rider in the latest Deficit Reduction Act that might open up the door for more provision of distance learning. In his view, there might be some sweet revenge by the adjuncts who will be the providers.

In my own experience, I find the students who have taken the prerequisites online are even less prepared than those who transferred the credits from community colleges. It is tempting for cyber-adjuncts to load up on classes, signing up for impossible loads at multiple schools, then doing the bare minimum possible to avoid being fired. I've heard rumors of cyber-adjuncts pulling down six figures through playing the system at multiple schools, but I cannot confirm these stories. Of course, adjuncts could always abuse the system, but given the limitations of time and geography, they have traditionally been the recipients of abuse.

The post offers additional prognostications.

My conjecture: absent any attempt by the universities deploying more distance learning without enhancing the value of the signal their degree confers, the positional arms race among parents to buy a better-known credential (note, I did not say better credential) rages as before.

BRATWURST WEATHER APPROACHES. Just another reason for some people to hate me.


Cox and Forkum published this two weeks ago.

E PLURIBUS UNUM. Downtown Chicago was the site of a large rally for immigrant rights today.

Alex Garcia and about 10 co-workers from a Joliet commercial sign company rode a Metra train to Chicago's Union Station and then walked about 12 blocks to Union Park, then re-traced their steps as they headed back to the Loop.

Garcia, whose company installs signs for McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food restaurants in the Chicago area, said, "Most people don't realize how much work we do, but it's part of their daily lives. We are putting up all the buildings and cooking all the food. Today, they'll understand."

Anticipating the big turnout, critics of illegal immigration held a preemptive news conference this morning in Grant Park. They predicted the rally would backfire on its organizers, stoking the anger of other Chicagoans that illegal immigrants were arrogant enough to demand increased rights.

I do have that paper on parallel immigration tracks to get in shape, and sehr schnell, for an upcoming conference in Chicago. The policy implications have some relevance.

Today's events come at a critical time in the immigration debate. Congress is weighing competing proposals over how to treat the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Rally organizers said they oppose H.R. 4437, a bill approved in the U.S. House of Representatives that would drastically strengthen immigration enforcement, including the construction of a fence along the Mexican border.

Instead, they back a competing bill that would provide legal status for most undocumented immigrants and make it easier for legal immigrants to bring in relatives. That legislation, sponsored by U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass), also would expand temporary work visas.

The more difficult one makes legal entry, the more determined the illegal residents will be to obtain regular status.

A subplot of the day's events, organizers said, was the Chicago economy's reliance on immigrant labor. Organizers encouraged participants to leave work, with some calling for a "general strike" today to underscore the workload shouldered by immigrants, including those without legal status.

Around the area, business owners weighed whether to give the march their blessing or to resist the employee exodus. Several Mexican box boys in a Montclare grocery store said they saw the march as a chance to affirm their dignity. But their boss Gus Labrakis, a Greek immigrant, was annoyed about how their participation might impact his business.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Labrakis said. "They're inviting even more hate against them. The real problem is at the border. If they keep coming by the millions, where will this lead?"

To an even more productive USA compared to the rest of the world? I wonder if there are enough parameters now to calibrate a numerical analysis. That "subplot" is precisely the "apprenticeship" argument upon which much of my current research rests.

THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-LESS. Or is it the have-nots? The Wall Street Journal hosts an exchange between Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Russell Roberts of George Mason University and Cafe Hayek. Topic: poverty and inequality. Arnold at Econ Log solicits your comments on the relevance of inequality, particularly his perception that Big Media discover it when other economic news is good.

WHY AM I HERE? It has been some time since I posted anything on the antics of the committee I was conscripted into for reasons that remain unclear. There was a February meeting that ended immediately before I intended to leave for points north; look for a longer comment on dispositions next week. The March meeting was earlier today. It ended just in time for me to hear the Wisconsin collapse on the radio.

But I'm beginning to figure something out. The committee, which might have been strengthened on the basis of some recommended practice of the National Council on Accrediting Teacher Education, appears to be more concerned with having the proper procedures in place for that accreditation audit. It reminds me of ISO 9001 or ISO 14,001, but we don't get to hang a fancy banner at the loading dock.

Here is an indication of the current state of teacher preparation. The State of Illinois requires that all seekers of a state teacher's certificate undergo a criminal background check, with fingerprints. This committee devoted about a half hour this afternoon to fretting over whether Northern Illinois University grant partial faith and credit to background checks conducted elsewhere. For now, no.

SWIFT OF FOOT. I investigated the Lionel Corporation website. The image on the catalog cover is timeless.


Lionel's version is capable of a higher scale speed than the prototype!

SPRING BREAK. Thanks for looking in. I do have some book reviews and mini-dissertations in mind for the upcoming week. Maybe some brass craftsmanship for your viewing pleasure as well.

REVEALED PREFERENCES. Another memorandum from headquarters.

As you are aware, we initiated a campus-wide effort (Early Alert) during the fall 2005 semester to assist our new freshmen with their transitions to our university. This initiative is focused on identifying and assisting freshmen who are at risk or are experiencing difficulties in adjusting to the university experience. The help of our faculty is critical to our success.

As. If. The. Mistakes. Of. Admissions. Are. My. Problem.

I am asking for your continued assistance in identifying freshmen students who may be experiencing academic adjustment issues. You may also choose to recommend upperclassmen that may be experiencing academic difficulty in your classes.Your 2005 fall semester efforts produced 500 referrals.

What's the cost-benefit ratio?

Students will be referred to various campus academic service programs such as tutoring or academic counseling. In addition, because you may be in the best position to assist your own students, they will be encouraged to meet with you to discuss any difficulties with class material.

I may be in the best position to assist my own students? Thanks. Isn't the whole point of letting the newbies know that office hours are available for consultation sufficient? We have to hire an army of counselors to reinforce the obvious?

The memorandum helpfully offers advice.

Do any of your students demonstrate the following?

poor class attendance
sleep in class
perform poorly on assignments
perform poorly on examinations
not turn in assignments or homework
seem disconnected or overwhelmed

Students demonstrating these behaviors may be at risk for poor academic performance.

Often, these students are not aware of services and programs that can enhance their academic success.

Marvelous. The problem isn't immaturity or irresponsibility, it's ignorance of the hand-holders.

What can faculty do?

Identify and refer at risk students to the Early Alert Program
Keep posted office hours and encourage students to visit for assistance
Provide feedback and grades for students throughout the semester
Assess student performance prior to the midterm withdrawal deadline

Students that are conscientious enough to take advantage of the latter three good professorial practices (which some of us have been doing for long before anybody conceived of an Early Alert Program -- am I really reading a revelation about this university's preferences for temporary faculty?) are unlikely to have such lax life-management skills as to demonstrate the so-called at-risk behaviors. Those that are not? Well, they are adults. I am not aware of any public outcry about the universities being excessively demanding, although this service, recently and repeatedly, has called attention to public outcry about a failure of the universities to be demanding.

I DID MENTION ECONOMIES OF AGGLOMERATION. Somehow, though, the votes from town meetings at Newfane, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney, Vermont (via Best of the Web) do not seem likely to reverse the reversal of agglomeration economies the Green Mountain State has been experiencing. (What would Calvin Coolidge or Ned French say?)

SWITCHING OUT THE SCRAP LINE? It appears as though Cassandra at Villainous Company has quietly resumed posting. (There appears to be some potentially nasty script on the site, however.)

THE INSTA-CELA EXPRESS. A left-handed compliment.

ON THE ACELA to NYC, and for the moment at least the wireless is working. I'm pretty sure that the economics don't work, but you can't fault Amtrak on the service. As I've noticed before, the folks who work on these trains take pride in what they do, and they do a good job. The Acela comparison makes flying seem even more like taking the bus than it already does.

I noticed no follow-up post grousing about the common boarding foul-ups at NYP (Penn Station, for those of you in Knoxville), perhaps another good sign.

But let's tackle the economics for a moment. Are the four-wheelers attempting to get around the trucks on the New Jersey Turnpike, let alone the open-access bits of Interstate 95 in Delaware and Maryland, more subsidized, or less subsidized than the Business Class (Acela using the old British dodge of renaming "Third" as "Second") passengers quaffing coffees at intermittent sprints of up to 130 mph? Extra credit for working out the net contribution of the Conrail Shared Assets Area using the Corridor in the Linden-Metuchen section.

Once you've worked out whether socialism works on the roads, evaluate the explicit and implicit subsidies to the operators of those flying buses.

WORKING YOUR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE? Some people have a good problem that enables them to pass on posing for the art students. Others are not yet there.

BURSTING BUBBLES. The Lady Huskies had a halftime lead against recently promoted to the top 25 Bowling Green, a team that did not rest on its press clippings in the second half. The men got behind early against Toledo and time ran out before they could get ahead.

Around the neighborhood, [Wisconsin]-Milwaukee's men and women already have their automatic bids in hand, the women with a little help from Illinois-Chicago [Circle], and well ahead of expected dual participants Duke, Connecticut, Ohio State, and Tennessee (the men with an assist from Milwaukee.) The Golden Porcupines, er, Chickens, er, That Other Milwaukee Team That Will Never Schedule the Panthers will be waiting for a 'phone call on Sunday. The Badgers? If not, North. Dakota. State.

RESPECTING DIFFERENCE. There is a coffee house in central DeKalb that serves a great jumbo mocha and it offers a panoramic view of the Overland Route. (An economist, as you know, is an organism for converting espresso shots into sufficient conditions.) The coffee house also offers live entertainment of various kinds. (I had to bail on Saturday as they were setting up for Eve Ensler's talkative privates and I was contemplating an envelopment of a different kind.)

That same weekend, a Christian theme band decided not to play a concert there, as the art exhibit for the month featured some nudes.

"Right now I'm working through what is an appropriate venue for us," said Keslinger guitarist Seth Deming. "[The nude paintings] were a gray line and since it was a gray line, we decided it would be better if we didn't play."

Members of the band asked management of The House Cafe to remove the paintings. The House Cafe did not comply with the request.

"We agreed to showcase the artists' work, and could not compromise their gallery time by taking down the paintings," said John Ugolini, booking agent for Kickstand Productions. "[The House Cafe are contracted and bound to an agreement with artists that showcase their work at the cafe. We are not permitted to take down artists work without the consent of the artist."

[Painter Gary] Schirmer was not informed of the situation at the time, but said he understands how some people could have been offended.

"I know that there's probably people that are offended by nudity in general I suppose," Schirmer said. "But look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and that's really where my work is rooted."

Notice that there were no torchings of art galleries or gripes about fundie-fascists.

ON THE READY TRACK. Sorry not to have posted any modeling progress for some time. Here is a progress report.

I was able to secure one of the few Suburban Tanks K-Line delivered before legal troubles overwhelmed them. Thanks, Norm. (And yes, I am seriously researching a proper digital camera.)


From time to time, the Locomotive Workshop kit of the same engine has turned up in my pictures. Here it is, laid out, if not yet soldered together. (Soldering is something better not done tired, and I have been tired a lot lately.)


Side-by-side, the engines are comparably proportioned. The cast-in details in the K-Line will be a bit clunky compared to the soldered-on brass details, but I clearly have my work cut out for me.


More model pictures as time and energy permit.

CONTEMPLATING THE ACADEMY. University Diaries recommends a Camille Paglia essay that, well, could use work on the internal consistency. On the one hand,

The ideological groupthink of Harvard's humanities faculty does patent disservice to the undergraduates in their charge, but it is the faculty alone that should properly determine curriculum and academic policy, a responsibility that descends from the birth of European universities in the Middle Ages. Over the past 40 years, there has been a radical expansion of administrative bureaucracies on American college campuses that has distorted the budget and turned education toward consumerism, a checkbook alliance with parents who are being bled dry by grotesquely exorbitant tuitions.

To repeat. That. Is. Not. The. Main. Problem. The administrative expansion allows the expansion of the coreless curriculum while providing the climbing walls and big time sports to sugarcoat the indoctrination.

[Departing president Larry] Summers's strategic blunders unfortunately took the spotlight off entrenched political correctness and changed the debate to academic power: who has it, and how should it be exercised? Nationwide, campus administrations faced with factionalized or obdurate faculties have in some cases taken matters into their own hands by creating programs or reducing and even eliminating departments. The trend is disturbingly away from faculty power.

I've seen that done for budgetary reasons, sometimes to well-established departments. On the other hand, the proliferation of what I have referred to as programs for Cooling Out the Mark pack the faculty governing bodies with reliable sycophants for the administrations, to the detriment of learning.

IT now remains to be seen whether Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is capable of self-critique. Will its members acknowledge their own insularity and excesses, or will they continue down the path of smug self-congratulation and vanity?

Clearly not. Newmark's Door suggests the smugness infests a somewhat younger private college with a weaker hockey team than Harvard's, where a faculty committee decided that an arts degree was required for economics because, well, all the other arts and sciences departments had an arts degree.

"Since every department in the College of Arts and Sciences offers the A.B. degree, and most all departments offer both degrees, that option should be available to students in the economics department," said Alvin Crumbliss, professor of chemistry and chair of the [Duke Arts and Sciences] Curriculum Committee.

That's despite the Duke economics department being enrollment-impacted. If the powers that be at Duke are opting not to match positions with enrollment, what hope do we have? (And what is this phenomenon telling us about any plans to community-college-ify economics departments? Does anyone seriously expect to find sufficient new Ph.D.s in economics willing to teach four or five courses of fifty to 100 students and grub for grant money?)

Back to Professor Paglia.

If Harvard cannot correct itself in this crisis, it will signal that academe cannot be trusted to reform itself from within. There is a rising tide of off-campus discontent with the monolithic orthodoxies of humanities departments. David Horowitz, a 1960's radical turned conservative, has researched the lopsided party registration of humanities professors (who tend to be Democrats like me) and proposed an "academic bill of rights" to guarantee fairness and political balance in the classroom. The conservative radio host Sean Hannity regularly broadcasts students' justifiable complaints about biased teachers and urges students to take recording devices to class to gather evidence.

These efforts to hold professors accountable are welcome and bracing, but the danger is that such tactics can be abused. Tenure owes its very existence to past intrusions by state legislatures in the curricular business of state universities. If politicians start to meddle in campus governance, academic freedom will be the victim. And when students become snitches, we are heading toward dictatorship by Mao's Red Guards or Hitler Youth.

No kidding.

I submit that the abuse is beginning. Consider John Fund's attempt to hound a former spokesman for the Taliban out of Yale.

Shouldn't people of good will, both left and right, ask both Yale and the Bush State Department that issued his student visa if something is wrong with this?

No. We have a better chance to get him thinking differently about the world than he would if we packed him off to some madrassa. Does nobody remember Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku's reservations about sailing against the United States? A few more cosmopolitans in the Imperial General Staff and the unpleasantness might have been avoided.

But that does not absolve the faculty committees and the administrations of the responsibility to ensure that the higher learning is higher and includes learning.

GOOD EVENING, HOCKEY FANS. Sorry, King. Wisconsin 1, St. Cloud 0 Friday. Wisconsin by 3-1 on Saturday.

Those four consecutive home losses to close January seem like ancient history now.

The best news is in the footnotes.

[S]ellout crowd of 15,237.

SIEVE!

RIDING THE RAILS. DeKalb, Illinois, is fifteen miles from the west end of the Metra suburban train line at Elburn. There are two well-maintained mainline tracks of the Union Pacific, as well as a classic steam-era depot downtown and flat land near campus that could relatively easily be converted to a suburban train terminal with all the proper safety features.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is thirty miles from the north end of the Metra suburban train line at Kenosha. There is one track, kept in shape for the Oak Creek power plant, as well as a less-well cared for industry lead north into Milwaukee. The steam-era depots at Racine and Cudahy are in rough shape, and the interlocking leading from the former Chicago and North Western to the Milwaukee Road at Washington Street could use work.

Put your money on Milwaukee getting an extension of Metra service before DeKalb does. Owen at Boots and Sabers notes that a Greenfield legislator seeks to protect the commuter trains from a tax-limitation amendment being contemplated in Wisconsin. I'll leave the Wisconsin politics to Wisconsinites and focus on the proposed trains.

A Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission study committee has recommended extending the Metra service from Kenosha to Racine and downtown Milwaukee, with additional stops at Cudahy, South Milwaukee, Oak Creek, Caledonia and the Town of Somers. Planners are now conducting a more detailed study.

Sometimes the fallout from public policy changes takes a long time. These sound like limited-train stops on The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Co. The pairing of "Railway" with "Light" was proscribed by the 1938 Public Utility Holding Company Act. But I digress.

There were stations at South Milwaukee and Cudahy almost up to Amtrak, as well as local stops at National Avenue on both the North Western and the Saint Paul. A Bay View station? I don't recall any such thing, although the idea of unloading from a train to walk to Three Brothers or DeMarini's has some appeal.

CONTEMPLATING HIGHER EDUCATION. Dan Drezner has a number of links. InstaPundit has been following a comparison of Harvard with General Motors at its most oblivious. Although there is potential for other institutions of higher learning to provide what Harvard has been failing to deliver, more difficult days are likely to precede that transition. Let me refresh your memory about a review of Killing Thinking, a book I am contemplating buying. The problem we face in the trenches is that until the people who run the universities, particularly at the mid-majors and the four-years, stop thinking about the diploma mills as the competition and mindlessly proffering "access" and "diversity" as higher goals, the positional arms race to get into the Harvards for fear of otherwise not being able to make any social connections as well as not learning anything will continue.

CRUNCHY CRUNCH CRUNCH. Via Betsy's Page, news that "Go West, Young Man," is still sound advice in Vermont.

Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.

Vermont also has the highest rate of students attending college out of their home state — 57 percent, up from 36 percent 20 years ago. Many do not move back. The total number of 20- to 34-year-olds in Vermont has shrunk by 19 percent since 1990.

Research project: how do those numbers compare with Pittsburgh, or Milwaukee, or Cleveland, to think of cities with comparable populations and possibly one Congressional district.

The back-to-the-land influx of the 1960's, 70's and 80's, which once had Vermont growing faster than the country as a whole, has dissipated, [University of Vermont] Professor [and Cold Spring Shops reader Art] Woolf [who inter alia directs the economic education efforts for Vermont] said. Vermont may have lost some cachet for the people often referred to as "flatlanders."

Wait a minute here. "Flatlander" is the kinder way of saying F.I.B.

"If you live in New York or Boston and you want to get away from it all, these days it's just as cheap to fly out to Boise, Idaho, or Montana," Professor Woolf said.

Fewer babies are being born in part because Vermont has few immigrants, who tend to have larger families. Vermont has also lost many good-paying jobs, driving away many well-educated young people and further discouraging businesses.

Airline deregulation on one hand, the exhaustion of Sixties nostalgia on the other? Read on. There's reason for me to keep working on my current research.

The worker shortage recently forced Mr. Douglas to say he would not drive out illegal immigrants working on Vermont's dairy farms.

"I respect the laws of the United States, of course," [Governor Jim] Douglas said. "But the cows have to be milked."

There is also a serious housing shortage, with mountains and environmental restrictions barring building in many places.

The Last New Ager will be able to watch the sun go down behind Lake Champlain content that there will be no light pollution from a Wal-Mart and its attendant parking lot.

The article also suggests that the competition between elite private colleges and flagship state universities for prime students is getting hotter.

Vermont has the most colleges per capita in the nation and is full of out-of-state students who leave after graduating. But Vermonters often find tuition lower elsewhere because Vermont's colleges and universities get less state financing.

And there are consequences to declaring your neighborhood a nuclear-free zone.

Jennifer Black of Walden, Vt., now in Stoneham, Mass., said she contemplated returning, with two children for Vermont's schools. But jobs for her husband, a defense industry engineer, are "hard to come by" in Vermont, as are some conveniences.

"When I'm up there visiting, I think I would love to live up there," said Ms. Black, 36. "The air's so fresh." But, she added, "you have to drive half an hour to a grocery store. I can walk to a grocery store from here. There's a place where my kids can take swimming lessons readily available here."

Yet another research project: what happens when the economies of agglomeration work in reverse?

GOING FALCON HUNTING. The Lady Huskies withstood a Miami rally at the beginning of the second half to take both halves and earn a trip to Cleveland. The newspaper noted the contribution of this team's juniors. This site has noted the previous coach's success at recruiting players. Developing their talents was another matter. Other Northern Illinois teams also had a successful Saturday.

GOOD SNOWMAN SNOW. December colder than usual, January warmer, February close to the average if with little snow accumulation, now two inches of wet snow suitable for snowmen.

THE SOUND OF ATLAS, SHRUGGING. University Diaries has some fun with the observations a recently-fed-up professor somewhere in the Northwest (conjecture: Portland State) published as a "Goodbye to All That." Let's focus on the economics. The fed-up professor, first.

My president had just announced to the community at large that I was lazy and doing a bad job. I was now going to have to keep up with the for-profit Joneses. Internet classes. Saturday classes. Satellite campus classes. Night classes. What we needed was enhanced customer service with a side of more publications, please. You see, Almost Metropolitan State is almost a research university and suffers from a transitional identity disorder.

Oh, and don't forget that the research has to be sponsored. We hear the same stuff here.

I concur in part and dissent in part from University Diaries.

When your institution has no self-respect, no sense of itself as a university rather than a market-driven information delivery system, it makes sense to bail.

The real market test is not the challenge offered by the on-line diploma mills. The market test higher education is failing is its delivery of higher-level skills. Tightly Wound takes us part of the way.

Academics should be worried, and not about David Horowitz, because it seems to me that--fair or not--we're heading toward a place where "learning for its own sake," no longer justifies the expense, and the consequences will be dire indeed--and not just for the academics.

That is, if there is any learning going on.

When barely half the nation's kids don't read well enough to understand first-year college reading assignments, when they know more about The Simpsons and American Idol than they do about rudimentary aspects of the US Constitution, when kids are being told in school that George Bush is a "war criminal," that he is "eerily similar to Hitler," or that "capitalism is at odds with humanity," something is very wrong.

When kids don't have the math skills to balance checkbooks, or figure out restaurant tips; when the Defense Department has trouble finding qualified public school students to recruit; when barely half of Chicago Public School students graduate, and if they do, 75% to 95% must take remedial reading and math classes in junior college; when two-thirds of New Orleans public school fourth graders "do not have basic competence in math," something is very wrong.

And most of the cheese-moving the administrations at the Upwardly Mobiles have been engaging in does not position the faculty to better be able to correct these deficiencies in their charges' performance.

Meanwhile, the administrations and their apologists in the faculty seek to deflect legislative micro-management and whipped-up popular opprobrium by appeals to perceived anti-intellectualism. Professor Bainbridge dissents.

The function of scholarship thus is not always a critical one, seeking to expose faults, but rather can (and, I think, should be) a respectful one, seeking to grope towards understanding through science, history, myth, fable, custom, and tradition.

Indeed, while one social function of scholarship is to provide empirical observations about the current state of the world, an equally critical function is to situate those observations within the customs and traditions of society.

Read and understand.

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY. Mid-American Conference teams, including Northern Illinois's football team, suffered most of the scholarship recisions under the new National Collegiate Athletic Association academic performance guidelines. The Mid-American's guidelines are somewhat more stringent than the Association's.

The director of athletics at Northern Illinois came close, this afternoon, to confirming that none of the Mid-American's November football games would be played on Saturday. That takes students out of the classroom or away from their studies on school nights, but it enhances the television opportunities for football.

WHAT IS HEADQUARTERS THINKING? The department and the dean had a frank and open exchange of views earlier this week. There has apparently been a change in the way the university allocates resources. Departments that are what headquarters calls "enrollment-impacted" might be eligible for additional faculty to offer additional sections of classes, but there's no presumption that those resources will be available. There's also reason for headquarters to study some economics. The university currently has a tuition-protection plan under which students who stay registered in good standing will pay the same rates for nine semesters. Headquarters understands this commitment as a constraint on their ability to raise additional revenues. The way the dean put it, if the state rescinds some of the moneys that were budgeted, the university cannot make good their losses by raising tuition. That evaluation is incomplete. On the one hand, there might be more students enrolled under the expectation of a constant tuition than under uncertainty about further increases. On the other, there might be more continuing students under that expectation than there would be with an increase. Thus, the effect of a tuition increase might be to reduce revenues to the university.

JUST LIKE FOOTBALL. The Northern Illinois men defeated Western Michigan, at Western Michigan, to earn the Mid-American West title outright and a trip directly to the field of eight in Cleveland. The schedules I'm hearing suggest contemporaneous use of the old Gund Arena for men's and women's tournaments.

I AM THE EGGPLANT. I AM THE WALNUT. For a change of pace I attended part of the American English performance at Otto's Niteclub. (Unlike Liverpool's Cavern, the concert used the first floor stage area, rather than the basement.) The performances are quite faithful to the music as I remember it from my road-trip collections, and a few of the tunes jogged some memories. The younger set is not quite so prone to screaming as the fans I recall from the Beatles' 1964 tour of the States, although they're quite receptive to the Sgt. Pepper and later era works, including the proper howls at the Eggman. Something there is about the visual effects for "Yellow Submarine" and "Octopuses' Garden." Put "GERITOL" in big letters behind the band and you're looking at Lawrence Welk for the 2020s.

OUR STUDENTS GET JOBS. In their fields. Good going.

LET FREEDOM RING. Rally Friday to show solidarity with Denmark.


Via Atlantic Blog off Kesher Talk.

GRAPPLING WITH COMPOUND SENTENCES. Perhaps my charges are no worse off than their elders.

Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances). But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey.

Perhaps I'm engaging in rivet-counting, but one could parse the First Amendment in several ways.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Here are two additional divisions of the rights. The "or" distinguishes freedom from religion (anti-anti-disestablishmentarianism?) from the free exercise of religion. That expands the list of rights to six. But notice the "and," which in the survey interpretation creates a second right. The previous items are separated by "or." Doesn't it make more sense to treat the petition for redress as a modification of "peaceably to assemble?" The Framers were unlikely to view a lawn-bowling assembly as a gathering of subversives. The Amendment protects the rights of people to gather and sing "We shall overcome."

The correct list of the five freedoms: freedom from religion, (public policy is non-sectarian), free exercise of religion (no belief system excluded), free speech (individual criticism of the government), free press (paid criticism of the government), and free assembly to petition (collective criticism of the government.)

CUE THE DANCE MUSIC. The Northern Illinois men's basketball team will do no worse than tie for first place in the Mid-American West. A win this Saturday, at home, secures the title outright. The women will host a play-in game for the tournament that evening.

RUNNING EXTRA. The men have to win on the road.

PRAISE FATHER, SON, AND CROLY GHOST. The newest print edition of Reason arrived at Cold Spring Shops headquarters this evening. The first letter to the editor is from Company Mail source Don Boudreaux of George Mason University and Cafe Hayek. I'm quoting it in full.

Asked why he wrote only about the Republican war on science, Chris Mooney replied, "Democrats have no constituency that compels them to deny something as fundamental as evolution." ("Unscientific Methods," January.)

The evidence contradicts Mooney's claim. Democratic ranks, like GOP ranks, bulge with people proclaiming that legislated minimum wages benefit low-wage workers and that goods in short supply are made more affordable by price caps. These people, in short, deny something as fundamental as supply and demand. More generally, the faithful of all political creeds imagine that the lives of 300 million diverse individuals can be successfully run by a handful of strangers who pose and pontificate beneath soaring marble domes.

These are egregious superstitions, immune to evidence and reason.

One can use the theory of complex adaptive systems to make sense of life forms, and of commerce, where order emerges without conscious planning. There is room to debate the dissimilarities. A shark does not think about its carnivorous essence. A trader can think about the nature of the trades he gains from.