THE FATAL CONCEIT GOES TO HOGWARTS.

The American Interest's Ben Judah pens an interesting hypothesis.  "American liberals’ love for J.K. Rowling misses the profound British conservatism of her books."  That might refer to "conservatism" as in "respect for the way things are done."  But that's not the same thing as conservatism, in any meaningful sense of the word.

I had half-forgotten about Hogwarts until I went to Oxford—or up to Oxford, as they say, as if it was a cloud, or a magic castle on an outcrop. Only on the other side of the university Sorting Hat myself did I begin to realize that Harry Potter was in fact a Tory.

Few Americans realize this, but a lot of what reads like fantasy in J.K. Rowling is in fact the British class system with magic wands, house elves and the Order of the Phoenix.

The Hogwarts Express is instantly recognizable as the Flying Scotsman to the Queen’s Balmoral and the prize Highlands shooting estates. The Hogwarts Houses are the Oxford Colleges. Harry’s scholastic shopping trips to Diagon Alley (to get your owl and your magic wand) are so obviously the pricey ritual of stocking up for country boarding school. Platform 9¾ at Kings Cross is, surprise, surprise right next to Platform 10 that takes you “up” to Cambridge. And as for a game of Quidditch, it’s either cricket or the sui generis Eton Wall Game.

Even fewer Americans realize Young Potter is in fact, as I grew to realise, a Tory.

Yes, I, too, had the same impression upon getting invited to an academic conference at Oxford.  This mowing machine even looks like something you'd unleash on a Quidditch pitch, that is, unless you were making do with an intramural field at a directional state university (the horror!)

Not to quibble too much about the ferroequinology, but you go "up" to Cambridge on a "down" train, and the tourist-friendly entrance to N^o. 9^3/4 is in a location outside of the flow of commuter traffic, who are boarding electric multiple units for Peterboro or Cambridge.

Somewhere, too, the ghost of Sir Nigel Gresley is cringing about the thought of his Doncaster racers being unavailable, such that the producers of the movies hired in Great Western's 5972 Olton Hall to run as Hogwarts Castle, to the great amusement of the devotees of things Great Western.

SEE YOU IN COURT.

Marquette political scientist John "Marquette Warrior" McAdams continues neither to recant nor to accept his excommunication.  He's recently picked up prominent allies, who argue Wisconsin's Supreme Court ought hear his case against Marquette.  George Will, who never lacks for work involving such things as Trump dossiers, national security, or the Chicago Cubs, suggests the Court can "right a flagrant wrong."  That is, "Prospective Marquette students, and Marquette alumni, must decide whether this school, awash with the current academic hysteria and corruption, merits their confidence and support. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court must lay down the law that can stop some of the rot this case illustrates."  The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal also gets involved.  "A Jesuit School Gets Dogmatic," they say, and it gets better from there.  Professor McAdams quotes the editorial, in full.  A sample: "[J]esuitical is the word that fits its explanation for firing a tenured political science professor who defended a student who was badly treated by an intolerant graduate instructor."  We'll see whether that national attention concentrates any minds, at Marquette or at the Court. 

NOW, JUST WIN.

The Green Bay Packers begin a reorganization with a new general manager.

[Packer president] Mark Murphy played the percentages and made a football scout the Green Bay Packers’ new general manager.

Next comes the fallout.

Many signs over the past week pointed to Murphy, the Packers’ president and CEO, choosing the team’s salary-cap manager and top administrator on the football side, Russ Ball, as the new GM. Instead, Murphy surprised on Sunday by hiring the 44-year-old Brian Gutekunst, who first joined the Packers as a scouting intern in 1997.

That’s playing the odds. The Packers have been a model franchise ever since Bob Harlan, the team’s chairman emeritus, ceded to the quintessential scout, Ron Wolf, total control over football operations in 1991. There’s a lot to being a GM, but in the end his most important duties are drafting and signing players. If you don’t get that part right, the rest doesn’t matter. So the Packers’ GM really should be a scout above all.

That doesn’t mean Gutekunst will succeed. If it had been John Dorsey or John Schneider or Reggie McKenzie, there’d be a GM track record to go on. Gutekunst has never had this kind of authority, so just as with an on-the-rise scout from another team, we won’t know his capabilities until he does the job.

At the same time the Packers introduced Mr Gutekunst, Mr Murphy announced a change in the organization chart, with the general manager, the head coach, and the personnel director, Russ Ball, responsible for respecting the salary cap forming a troika.  That's apparently the organization chart of a number of other playoff teams.  Heavy, though, is the head that wears the crown.

It’s still too early to know how aggressive new Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst will be in free agency and the trade market, but if you’re head coach Mike McCarthy you got what you wanted.

Who knows how much McCarthy’s pointed remarks Thursday about the new man being a “good fit” (i.e., someone willing to stock his roster with more than just rookies), caused president Mark Murphy to choose a personnel man over an administrator (Russ Ball) as Ted Thompson’s successor?

It’s likely McCarthy’s comments helped influence Murphy’s decision to contact the Seattle Seahawks about the availability of general manager John Schneider. McCarthy and Schneider are close friends and Schneider was instrumental in McCarthy getting the job in Green Bay in 2006.

Even though the Seahawks blocked Murphy’s attempt, McCarthy still won.

Instead of working for Ball, whose mentor has been Thompson and whose aversion to free agency was predicted to be the same, McCarthy gets to work for a guy whose first impression in the personnel business was courtesy of Ron Wolf, the guy who rebuilt a failing franchise through the draft, free agency, trades and any other mode available to him.

Yes, and after his appointment, Mr Gutekunst was having a little fun on social media, teasing Mr Thompson about a box of scouting tapes devoid of any free agents ...

NO END TO THE ANKLE-BITING.

The University of Wisconsin football team won the Orange Bowl.  Alas, the Orange Bowl signed a contract, several years ago, with the Trump National Hotel at Doral.  Hilarity ensues.

After learning the University of Wisconsin football team will be staying at Trump National Doral Hotel in Miami, Florida in the days leading up to the Orange bowl, the Student Coalition for Progress issued a press release calling for an explanation from university officials.

The group is “disappointed” the team, band and alumni are staying in a hotel with the same name as the current president, who “oppresses those of color,” the press release said.

“The Student Coalition for Progress calls on the Orange Bowl and the Wisconsin Alumni Association to give a detailed explanation as to why this specific hotel was chosen,” the press release said.

Larry Wahl, Orange Bowl vice president of communications, said the contract for the hotels in which the team stayed for this game was set four years ago.

At the time of the press release, SCP was not aware that the contract was set four years ago, representative Ekenedilichukwu Ikegwuani, said.

“[The Orange Bowl] is in a multi-year contract with Trump Doral and Wisconsin is the fourth team to have stayed there,” Wahl said.

The hotels for the teams are determined by their partners’ requirements for accommodations and the Trump Doral hotel not only met, but exceeded these expectations, Wahl said. It is the bowl’s responsibility to make hotel arrangements for the team and band.

But, Ikegwuani said the team should have found other hotel accommodations in the Miami area.

“The Badger athletics isn’t hurting for money,” Ikegwuani said. “I felt like they had enough so that if they wanted to go somewhere else they could’ve.”

It's always easy to be generous with other people's money. That's always been a thing with the self-styled progressives.

Then comes the Emoluments Clause, where officials of the University have to back and fill to distinguish their business behavior from their priors.

Orange Bowl accommodations for the University of Wisconsin football team at a Florida resort owned by President Donald Trump may draw the Badgers into a lawsuit alleging the president's private business ventures violate the Constitution.

The Washington Post reported the stay may be used as evidence by the state of Maryland and District of Columbia in their June lawsuit that accuses the president of violating anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution by accepting millions from foreign and state governments to his private company.

No state funds were involved when the University of Wisconsin put up about 250 players, athletic department staff, senior university officials and members of the UW Board of Regents at the Trump National Doral golf resort from Christmas through New Year's, but the public university accepted the accommodations chosen by the Orange Bowl Committee.

The Washington Post estimates that the team's stay at the resort probably cost well over $100,000 based on rates paid by other groups. A UW-Madison spokesman said no tax dollars would be spent, and the university would pay for the accommodations with money generated by the Orange Bowl.

Accuracy in Academia's Malcolm Kline quips, "A college football team staying in a Trump hotel for the Orange Bowl should be easy material for a progressive wit, if you could find a witty progressive."

THE STRENGTH OF COLD SPRING SHOPS.

I recently found a picture taken during an upgrade of the East Troy Electric Railroad.

It came from a Facebook group, without further attribution as to photographer or date.

At left, locomotive L9 is pulling a string of ballast hoppers off the Wisconsin Central, now Canadian National, interchange track.  At right, locomotive L8 is on hand to provide additional muscle, and you'll note the classification lights for an extra train are lit.

Both motors weigh roughly fifty tons, inclusive of ballast.  The Eight was rebuilt from a work motor in 1955, and the Nine built new during 1944 to help move additional coal at the power plants for the war effort.  Eight remains in its interurban and Power Company colors, while Nine became the regular service freight locomotive when there were still carload freight customers to serve.  I'm not sure there are any remaining customers.  If there are, the locomotive has the contemporary rotating roof beacon and the other trappings intended to alert motorists that there is a real freight train coming.

LET'S COUNT OUR BLESSINGS, OR CHECK OUR PRIVILEGE.

Now that the Festive Season is winding down, and the vintage trains packed away, either for the year or first for a trip to the back-shop, let us reflect on Christopher Coyne's understanding of the political economy of Christmas.  "So this Christmas, as you’re huddled in front of fire drinking eggnog and singing carols, be thankful for the wealth and opportunity that the free market has generated, and signal your love by giving a gift that matters."

Yes, we'll be cheerful at Cold Spring Shops.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

Sometimes, working on the railroad involves long stretches of new track, or large chunks of benchwork and sub-roadbed.

That's all to make possible the detail work, which means building a custom turnout to fit a space where the out-of-the-box hardware won't go.

Get the stock rail for the main route in place, but not spiked fully, locate the frog (this took some trial and error here, but I can get away with a Number Eight on a ten-foot radius curve), now I've tied the other rail on the main route to the frog, and I'm laying out the diverging route.

A few more of these in, and we'll be seeing some trains running continuously.  The absence of the Packers from the playoffs means more model railroading opportunities.

A ROLLING STONE IN BERLIN.

Book Review N^o. 1 for this year will mention John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.  I picked up the fiftieth anniversary edition on an impulse, perhaps influenced by the cult of George Smiley that has taken over public television as a counterpart to the excessively flashy James Bond.  Author le  Carré did work in British Intelligence for a while, as a bureaucrat, rather than an intelligence officer, and his preface to the anniversary edition complains about how his works influenced public perceptions of intelligence services.  (Life imitating art: how many mafiosi watched the Godfather series to learn how a made man, in the sense they use the term, should behave?)

That noted: how is Smiley's world different from James Bond's, beyond the upscale casinos and hot babes?  The sense I get is, everyone in charge is too clever by half, and nobody should trust anybody, and people in difficult circumstances, which is reality for everyone in rebuilding Britain and divided Berlin, will do all sorts of odd things.  Perhaps I'm being naive thinking of the work as unremittingly depressing, or perhaps it's with the hindsight that Berlin is no longer divided.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

IS IT FAREWELL TO FOOTBALL?

Yes, I've lost interest in the playoffs with the Green Bay Packers eliminated.  The articles I'm commenting on today, though, went on-line before that amazing rally in Dallas had visions of Super Bowls dancing in people's heads.  (The rally was necessary because the defense was already questionable, but I digress.)

What ought be dancing in people's heads are visions of strong men taking too many hits to the head.  The American Conservative's David Gornoski puts it this way.  "Our reckoning with violence will cause the NFL to go the way of the circus."  The circus analogy is probably wrong, as elephants are for kids to ride, they're not whipped during their acts, and anyway, as long as there are jugglers and acrobats, there will be circus.

In football, though, bigger, faster, stronger turn into more injuries.  Mr Gornoski suggests it's time to get beyond the human sacrifices of Rome, even in metaphor.

[T]he state, in collusion with powerful corporate allies, uses spectacles like football to distract and pacify the people. Instead of the violent slaughtering of Roman games, our Christianized culture sends players into simulated, padded warfare. We pick teams to unite our personal lives under and forget about the state’s socio- and economic abuses just outside our doorsteps. Studies even suggest that violent crime drops during major televised sporting events.

But now, Trump and his liberal mirror rivals have pierced the veil by injecting the NFL with the profanity of politics: the realm where real factions use real violence of the state to punish their rivals through regulations, mandates, and taxes. When Trump said “fire them” about the protesting players, invoking the specter of both the penal and paternal side of government, forcing people to take sides and not over the gridiron but at either side of the water cooler and dinner table, it did the game no favors.

Eventually, it took a church monk named Telemachus challenging the violent sacrifice of the Roman gladiatorial games to end their carnage. He climbed into the arena and protested until he was summarily slaughtered. His self-sacrifice for the defense of victims led to the public’s loss of appetite for the violence.The last known Roman gladiatorial event was in 404 AD, less than two decades after Telemachus’s death.

Yes, in fifteen centuries, we might have learned a few things.

Today, myriad scandals serve as a persistent Telemachus threatening to bring the NFL down. Mothers and fathers all around the country are pulling their sons out of football due to the increased revelations of concussions and resulting brain damage caused by the sport. Whereas Roman citizens demanded their fighters stripped of armor to maximize carnage, increased paddings will end up making players look like Michelin men with bobble head-sized helmets.

In Rome, no one cared how gladiators treated their lovers. Today, growing public disgust with widespread reports of spousal abuse is souring the NFL’s mystique.

In college, the NCAA’s state-protected profiteering off of unpaid players’ physical sacrifice is increasingly criticized as well.

Meanwhile, diehard fans once thrilled by simulated violence are losing interest with ever constrained penalty rules and concussion concerns. The suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the game is waning: talks of brain damage, flags no longer able to unify people around soldiers’ sacrificial deaths, spousal abuse, and racial undertones are all exposing football as just a silly game to appease desires for tribalism and aggression—and make fat cat owners fatter. Not worth all the drama.

We should be proud that we do not send hungry lions into arenas with naked prisoners anymore. We have made progress because of Christianity’s leavening of the collective’s history-long abuse against the misfit person. Yet absent such gladiatorial games, our culture must confront our sacrifices of the innocent and nonviolent to appease our love for aggression as the means of keeping peace.

Victor Hanson also thinks along the lines of injuries, and the antiquities. Perhaps, though, the football establishment isn't thinking clearly about its audience.

In truth, the NFL's hard-core fan base is not comprised of bicoastal hipsters. Rather, the league's fan base is formed mostly by red-state Americans -- and many of them are becoming increasingly turned off by the culture of professional football.

Professional athletes are frequently viewed as role models. Yet since 2000, more than 850 NFL players have been arrested, some of them convicted of heinous crimes and abuse against women.

The old idea of quiet sportsmanship -- downplaying one's own achievements while crediting the accomplishments of others -- is being overshadowed by individual showboating.

Players are now bigger, faster and harder-hitting than in the past. Research has revealed a possible epidemic of traumatic brain injuries and other crippling injuries among NFL players. Such harm threatens to reduce the pool of future NFL players.

There is a growing public perception that the NFL is less a reflection of the kind of athleticism seen in basketball or baseball, and more a reflection of the violence of Mixed Martial Arts -- or of gladiators in the ancient Roman Colosseum.

We may know that football is finished when a city government says no to the extortion.

Over the last two decades, the American public has shelled out more than $7 billion to build or renovate NFL stadiums. Billionaire owners are able to blackmail the public to pay to keep a franchise or else lose it to a city that offers bigger stadium subsidies.

We'll be watching.

FINDING COHERENCE IN INCOHERENCE?

The Real Peer Review team flagged an article that's now ten years in print.  "Drawing upon insights from the sociology of science, I shall show how and why intersectionality could become a feminist success story. I shall argue that, paradoxically, it is precisely the concept's alleged weaknesses — its ambiguity and open-endedness — that were the secrets to its success and, more generally, make it a good feminist theory." I wonder if that's worth a trip to the library to see how its citation history has evolved.

As far as ambiguity and open-endedness: if you have an explanation that might work everywhere, it will be useless; on the other hand, if it yields no testable implications whatsoever, it will also be useless.

LOSING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS.

Preventable.

An 11-year-old girl was hit and killed by an Amtrak train in Florida Wednesday after she failed to hear the train conductor’s horn blow while she was crossing the tracks, investigators said.

Yazmin White was on the way home from a supermarket before walking through a wooded area and trying to cross over the railroad tracks, according to a media release.

Polk County detectives investigating the death said the conductor blew the train horn and started braking when he saw the girl attempting to cross the tracks. Investigators said Yazmin didn’t make any indication she was aware the train was approaching -- and evidence revealed she was wearing headphones at the time.

The conductor also told police she was looking down at her phone while she was walking.

That's an engineer who is going to be having nightmares, and there is a family mourning the loss, too young, of a young lady with an interest in music.

Dear reader, don't let your interest in music or current events or whatever is on your electronics render you unaware of your surroundings.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE VOTERS GONE?

Gone to Trumpland, most of them, according to Michael Barone.  (Give props to the political analyst who stays up late for the annual Census analysis of migration, rather than to ring in the new year or wait for Santa.)

Who are the big population gainers? Some small units: the District of Columbia, at 15 percent (big government, gentrification), North Dakota, at 12 percent (fracking, which liberals failed to stop), and Utah, at 12 percent (1950s-style high birthrate).

Those with the largest impact, however, are Texas, at 13 percent, and Florida, at 12 percent. Together, their population increase was 5.3 million, nearly one-third of the national total. Why? No state income taxes, light-touch regulation and resulting private-sector booms.

Three states actually lost population. Two are small and easily explainable. West Virginia's minus 2 percent can be attributed to Barack Obama's war on coal. And Vermont's minus 1 percent can be chalked up to Woodstock-era migrants -- Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean. They've liberalized the state's culture and politics, so with the state's high taxes and stringent environmental bans, no one is following.

The third loser is Illinois, at minus 0.3 percent. It takes some doing to get people to flee one of mankind's greatest artifacts, Chicago. But Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House for all but two years since 1983, has proved that he's up to the task.

Here's Mr Barone's hypothesis.

All of which suggests a counterintuitive hypothesis, that the patterns of internal and immigrant migration of 2010-17 look less like Barack Obama's ideal America and more like Donald Trump's.

The flight from high-tax to low-tax states, diminished but higher-skilled immigration, the fracking boom in North Dakota, the decline in hip Vermont -- you might even say 45 started winning even when 44 was in office.

That suggests a very different Donald Trump from the one currently being called out for not being interested in winning, let alone in governing.

The serious social science will take a few more years.

ELON MUSK WILL NOT BE HAPPY.

Tough times on Boston's Ashmont-Mattapan shuttle, doing a good impression of a War-era limited tram line.

A collision between two Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority streetcars last week means the agency is down to just five operating PCCs on the Ashmont–Mattapan High Speed Line.

The two PCCs that were damaged in the collision near the Cedar Grove station on Dec. 29 have joined three other historic streetcars in the MBTA deadline at Mattapan. With five PCCs out-of-service, the agency has reduced service on the 2.6-mile route through Dorchester, Mass. This week, the Mattapan line was running with four PCCs and one standby.

“Customers should expect to wait during rush hour approximately six and a half minutes between trolleys rather than 5 minutes. The MBTA appreciates the patience of our customers as we work to restore regular service to the Mattapan line,” officials tell Trains News Wire.

Imagine how many more random strangers can accumulate in ninety seconds.

The cars being operated are long out of production.  Boston authorities are contemplating either replacing the cars with newer cars, or converting the route to a busway.  You don't go to the local Farm and Fleet for PCC streetcar parts.

JOHN ROCKER GOT CUT FOR BEING MORE COLORFUL.

Yes, that's ancient history in blogosphere terms.  We're referring to a pitcher for the team formerly known as the Milwaukee Braves saying some, shall we say, unkind things about subway riders, specifically on the Seven line connecting Times Square with Shea Stadium.  There's still a Seven line, and there's a new stadium, but apparently having scorn for subway passengers is still a thing.  Consider Tesla founder Elon Musk.

The fracas began when Wired on Thursday published comments made by Musk at an artificial intelligence conference earlier this month. Musk said that “public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end?”

Musk further said that using public transit meant rubbing shoulders with “like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer. . . that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.”

Not that different in general disdain from the pitcher's comments.  But it's common to a theme, that riding the buses or the rails might not be for everybody.  Perhaps it is not, and perhaps transit exists in order for Thought Leaders to make it available to The Rabble.

Musk doesn’t want to share a vehicle with “a bunch of random strangers.” But the presence of random strangers is what a city is, and what successful transit is. The unique achievement of transit is to transport so many people in so little space with so little labor. Crowding—however much it bothers some people—is the essence of transit’s success.

Interestingly, his hyperloop is a plan to fill a faster vehicle with a bunch of random strangers, and perhaps those random strangers, even with toll roads and self-driving cars and all the rest, are choosing transit because it's still faster or less nerve-racking. (The shame, to take one example, is that there is only track capacity for three Naperville Zephyrs an hour without cutting off some of the shorter-turn fast trains during the rush hour, otherwise you'd likely have more people staying off the toll roads and expressways.)

Designing a transportation system, or any other public project, to reflect either the preferences of the designers or the perceptions by the designers of what is For Your Own Good, is unlikely to turn out well.

Elite projection is the belief, among relatively fortunate and influential people, that what those people find convenient or attractive is good for the society as a whole.  Once you learn to recognize this simple mistake, you see it everywhere.  It is perhaps the single most comprehensive barrier to prosperous, just, and liberating cities.

This is not a call to bash elites.  I am making no claim about the proper distribution of wealth and opportunity, or about anyone’s entitlement to influence. But I am pointing out a mistake that elites are constantly at risk of making.  The mistake is to forget that elites are always a minority, and that planning a city or transport network around the preferences of a minority routinely yields an outcome that doesn’t work for the majority.  Even the elite minority won’t like the result in the end.

Bet on emergence, dear reader, and fight shy of the fatal conceits.

IS CIVILIZATION A WHITE SPACE?

No.  But I have to be provocative because the intersectionality crowd are doing everything they can to get people to think the answer is yes.  I'm only slightly kidding.  Consider "Teachers must prevent 'assimilation' of 'whiteness'."  Yes, that's Campus Reform, and yes, that might be hyping research on the importance of not being impolite, which is what diplomacy is about.  But within a civilization, the conventions for not being impolite are the conventions that have emerged there.  I know I'm quoting David Marcus again, but quote him I must.

Cultural norms are self-imposed limitations on speech and actions, meant to preserve peace and order in a society. It is like a stream with banks that allow our public discourse to flow responsibly. When that stream is broadened and deepened, dangerous ideas flow in from both sides.

Too often, though, the first instinct of the intersectionality crowd is to tear down the banks.  Yes, I've had fun with a number of these previously.  Kat Timpf has her fun as well.

A REGION THE FOOTBALL TEAM CAN BE PROUD OF?

That's the Old Confederacy.

Despite Alabama’s grinding, eventual Sugar Bowl dominance, it’s not inconceivable this title game could have been Clemson vs. Georgia — a battle of schools located fewer than 80 miles apart. Had a play or two gone differently in the Rose Bowl, it would have been Oklahoma vs. Alabama. Oklahoma-Clemson wasn’t all that farfetched, either.

You pick the matchup. It didn’t really matter. From the moment the four-team bracket was announced, it was essentially a Southern regional tournament; the vast majority of the country’s college football fans were outsiders looking in.

Sure, it’s a feature of the system — of 130 FBS teams, only four make the Playoff. But when the largest swaths of the country are regularly shut out, it’s a troubling trend.

Or, perhaps it's revealed preferences.

In the aftermath of Wisconsin's Orange Bowl victory, Badger fans were pointing to how relatively few five-star players amongst home-grown walk-ons got the better of the Convicts 'Canes and attended a university that produced way more Rhodes Scholars (who must have a varsity letter of some kind.)

The powers that be have been doing all sorts of things to bring down the Southeastern Conference.  OK, I was being mean a decade ago suggesting that S.E.C. meant Special Education Conference (and North Carolina's eligibility course scam was to make their basketball teams more powerful in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but until recently, that was universities served by the old Atlantic Coast Line, i.e. in the Heart of Dixie).  And yet, the image of lacquered women and charming rogues hanging out on fraternity house porches lasts.  The cool kids, not the nerds, and just a little Lost Cause nostalgia.  But proving important theorems?  That's for the B1G.  (Apart from Michigan, which didn't beat a team that got a bowl bid last season -- no Kellogg's or Post endorsements for you! -- the other B1G teams, including newcomer Penn State won their bowl games.  They do, however, prove important theorems in Ann Arbor.)

There may be, however, a connection between how the local collegiate teams are doing and how their professional counterparts fare.  Consider, this year, how New Orleans, [North] Carolina, and Atlanta are all in one conference playoff, and Jacksonville have returned to the other.  At least, with the Green Bay Packers shaking up their front office, the Wisconsin Badgers stand strong.

SOUPING UP THE TRANS-PENNINE.

I admit to enjoying riding the Route of the War of the Roses, er, the York to Liverpool via Leeds and Manchester Trans-Pennine services, when I have the occasion to do so.

For the most part, that service has made use of various glorified (and sometimes not so glorified) railbuses and on occasion a locomotive-hauled train destined for Newcastle and beyond would show up.

Now, though, Midland commuters and the occasional pub-crawlers will have new, purpose-built coaching stock.

Hitachi commences work on the third fleet being built for TransPennine Express; totalling an extra 13 million extra seats per year. The new intercity trains will connect Northern England and Scotland with 19 new five carriage trains containing Japanese bullet train technology.

Production work has begun on two test trains in Japan which will arrive in the UK in 2018. The trains will be maintained at Hitachi’s newly built £80 million depot in Doncaster, home to 250 employees and four apprentices. Investment in the trains and new depot come alongside the Great North Rail Project, which will upgrade key parts of the route to enable better services.

I suppose it's uncharitable to suggest that putting Nystrom trucks and ribbed sides on a baggage car means the baggage car contains 1938 Hiawatha technology, but good suspensions and improvements in framing and body strength with less weight is a good thing, bullet train hype or not.  And Doncaster, historic home of Sir Nigel Gresley's steamers: Happy New Year.  Make the Great Northern Great Again, forsooth!

As well as connecting North of England and Scotland the fleet will run from Manchester and Liverpool, across the iconic Pennines to cities such as Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

The trains will provide 161 additional seats compared to existing trains and passengers will benefit from spacious carriages, extra legroom and additional luggage space. Each new train will offer fast, free Wi-Fi in both Standard and First Class as well as a complimentary on-board entertainment system, Exstream, allowing customers to stream the latest movies and TV shows during their journey.

Berry Sas, Hitachi Rail Europe Projects Director, said: “Millions of journeys along the popular transpennine route will be transformed once these pioneering intercity trains are introduced into service.”

As those trains will be under wires from Leeds as far as Edinburgh, they will have the capability to switch from diesel to electric drive en-route.  Nice to see that the FL9 dual-mode principle has grown up.

LOSING THE INTELLECTUAL TRADITION.

Joy Pullmann makes the case for Why Every American Should Study Western Heritage 101.  It's a column-length endorsement of Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn's free introductory lecture.

Thus, ignorance of one’s intellectual tradition leads to cultural chaos. He gives examples of this cultural chaos, including the refusal of high school and college teachers to tell students what constitutes good literature and why, instead telling students there is no way of knowing.

That's also long been my theme, although I am more provocative.

Here's why trendy thinking is hazardous.

He says a “virus has come among us,” a virus in the form of the idea that “the things in the past have been superseded, they’re not valuable, they’re obsolete.” While this may be true of some things, particularly technological advancements, he says this is not true of many things, particularly truths about human nature that over time Western culture has uncovered and handed down.

Sometimes, the loss of the past ideas appears innocuous.  For the past few weeks, I've tuned out much of the clutter of the news channels and social media, and worked on other projects, to the accompaniment of seasonal music on a Music Choice channel.  But I'm struck by the way contemporary artists cover the sacred tunes.  Consider Stille Nacht, in the pop versions of Silent Night.  Everybody likes that "sleep in heavenly peace," sometimes enough to graft it onto a modified third stanza, but "Jesus, Lord at Thy birth" generally doesn't make the cut, let alone those quaking shepherds of the second stanza.  In Joy to the World, I can excuse the omission of the counterpoints symbolizing Heaven, then Nature, singing and repeating the sounding joy: maybe that's too much for pop audiences to follow.  But then such covers also leave out the third stanza totally.  Sins, sorrows, thorns, curses.  To a secular view, that's such a downer, although the whole point of Christmas as a religious event is in seeing off the sins, sorrows, thorns, and curses.  Perhaps, though, I'm overthinking things.  Many of the covers, including the famous Bruce Springsteen version, omit the elephants, boats, and kiddie cars from Santa Claus is Coming.

Save your pouting, dear reader, for the more serious consequences of denying coherent beliefs.

“There needs to be a revival of learning,” [Arnn] says in the Q&A with Hillsdale journalism professor John Miller, a National Review contributor. “We are in the midst of great movements in America. There’s a crisis, and what that means is, soon enough, not necessarily this year but soon enough, we’re going to have to pick how we govern ourselves. Because we’re sort of doing it both ways now and we’re running out of money… That choice, however can only be well-made by somebody who has a thorough understanding of the two alternatives, either this progressive-bureaucratic form or the constitutional form that has governed America for most of its history.”

For several generations now, he says, this broad and deep knowledge that is key to America’s survival as a singular nation that preserves citizens’ natural liberties has been eroded. Western civilization’s centuries of dialogue between Athens and Jerusalem — two historic cities that represent reason and faith, respectively — establish universals about human nature that Americans once again need to draw upon to make key decisions about our future. This is why the college has put this lecture series, and many others, online.

“There’s a truth to by found by reason for every human being and a truth to be found by faith for every human being,” Arnn says. “…There are things to know that are lovely and ennobling to know.”

Wishing these things away as "hegemonic" or "triggering" or what have you isn't likely to turn out well.

THE NEW NEWS IS OLD NEWS.

Collaboration creates mediocrity.  Yes, that's long been a theme of mine.

The poster may still be available from Despair, Inc.  But let's have Inc.'s Geoffrey James elaborate.

In previous columns, I've pointed out that open-plan offices, with all their interruptions, distractions, and noise pollution, are productivity sinkholes. I've also pointed out that collaboration tends to penalize the competent who end up doing most of the work.

A recent study published in Applied Psychology has now confirmed that a collaborative work environment can make top performers--the innovators and hard-workers--feel miserable and socially isolated.

The problem is that rather than seeing a top performer as a role models, mediocre employees tend to see them as threats, either to their own position in the company or to their own feelings of self-worth.

Rather than improving their own performance, mediocre employees socially isolate top performers, spread nasty rumors about them, and either sabotage, or attempt to steal credit for, the top performers' work. As the study put it: "Cooperative contexts proved socially disadvantageous for high performers."

This social isolation creates special difficulties for introverted employees who work in open-plan offices. While some extroverts seem to draw energy from a chaotic environment, introverts find such environments draining.

Sometimes the only way that introverts can get their work completed is to work from home, creating even more potential social isolation. Indeed, top performers who work from home are natural and easy target for workplace gossip and backbiting.

Unless checked, this tendency can result in an exodus of top talent.

There are a number of "unless checked" phenomena to explore in that passage.  My formulation for "penalize the competent" takes the form "punished for being cooperative."  The challenge, whether we are considering an academic, corporate, or other bureaucratic environment, is in coming up with the right set of incentives and rules by which people will take on the onerous tasks properly, rather than doing them badly so as not to be assigned them again.  I note, further, that this collaboration talk might have been a way to get away from strict hierarchies, in which the incompetent insubordinate is fired (or confined to quarters) but when the superior is incompetent, it's the incompetent superior sabotaging or stealing the credit for the subordinate top performer.  And I haven't even touched the ways in which collaboration becomes a forum for straining at gnats.  (Mr James's column found via Joanne Jacobs.)

IN PRAISE OF THE HIAWATHA.

Huffington Post offer Ten Reasons To Visit Chicago.  Well, nine.

10. For the beer and cheese in Milwaukee

Just a two-hour drive, train or bus ride away is Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Squeeze in time for a day trip – especially you are a beer or cheese lover – and tick off another state.

What this article doesn't mention (which is a serious lapse for a posting intended for British and continental readers who might have priors about the parlous state of U.S. trains) is that the Hiawathas run roughly on two-hour headways, and the accommodations are more comfortable than those of your typical regional rail train.  Nor does the article mention how close a number of the named attractions are to the Intermodal Station, where the buses and trains call.

Milwaukee Public Market is the perfect place for a gourmet feast with its large selection of local vendors, food counters, restaurants, bakeries and even a wine bar. You can’t leave Milwaukee without tasting cheese curds – these mouthwatering delights are best enjoyed breaded and fried. You won’t look at cheese the same way ever again!

Visit the home of PBR as Pabst Milwaukee Brewery and Taproom is located in downtown Milwaukee. Take a stroll to Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery where you can learn about the history of Pabst.

Stop by Milwaukee’s spy bar – Safe House – located down an alley way with an unassuming entrance. You’ll need a password to get in though but don’t worry if you don’t know it though. All will be revealed after completing a task on arrival!

Milwaukee is home to a great selection of breweries which offer tours, but if you are looking for a tour which offers a generous amount of beer and will have you doubled over with laughter then go to Lakefront Brewery.

And you can eat a bratwurst without worrying about whether you're debasing Illinois's currency!

Best, though, to hold off until spring.  We're re-enacting the Ice Bowl in weather and in spirit this week and next, if not in Packer outcomes.

EVEN DAVE BARRY MOCKS YOU.

Dave Barry's year-end round-up never fails to amuse.  But you know you're in trouble when you read this.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, seeking to prop up his nation’s collapsing economy, announces the creation of a new digital currency called the “Petro,” which will be backed by a combination of oil reserves and a magic feather. The Illinois Legislature quickly follows suit, announcing that from now on the financially troubled state will pay its debts with the “Porko,” a digital currency backed by bratwurst.

That's going to be interesting, when (as perhaps Mr Barry has learned after the Orange Bowl) the bratwurst is in Wisconsin.

Illinois's troubles, however, are no laughing matter.

Gov. Bruce Rauner has advanced a turnaround agenda, most of it swatted down by Democrats who control the legislature. What is the alternative proposed by House Speaker Michael Madigan or Senate President John Cullerton to bring more jobs, to reel in all the people — prospective employers and employees alike — now decamping to Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Texas, Florida, Colorado ...?

There was — is — virtually none. Rauner aside, most of the ruling pols don’t say much. Madigan and Cullerton have spent a combined 86 years in Springfield, so don’t look to them for bold, disruptive ideas to create private sector growth, rescue public finances and create more taxpayers. The Illinois most of us see as gravely challenged is the Illinois they’ve created.

It's an Illinois that major employers avoid, perhaps tempted by that bratwurst.  "State and local lawmakers apparently didn’t get a wake-up call when Foxconn snubbed Illinois to build a giant electronics factory just over the state line in Wisconsin — close enough to benefit from Illinois’ transportation system but safely out of range of this state’s infamous dysfunction."  Promises to be an interesting year, with gubernatorial elections along with at least one Senate seat.  Thus far, no primary challenge to the governor, and the Democrats running more as Not Rauner than as Not Business As Usual.

ACT LIKE YOU'VE MADE A PLAY BEFORE.

The Orange Bowl is still not The Orange Bowl, and yet using it as a consolation prize for teams that didn't survive the algorithm that replays the Southeastern Conference title game establishes the national tournament field makes a nod to tradition.  Even when that nod gives the Miami Hurricanes effectively a home bowl game, hosting Wisconsin.

The Miami fans have adopted what appears to be a defensive coordinator's incentive called a "turnover chain."

Al Diaz photograph retrieved from Miami Herald.

I'll let people with more refined sensibilities than mine deconstruct the cultural appropriation of a bit of gangsta bling by Miami's upscale fans.  I think the lady to the left of the chain-wielder is attempting to make the orange-and-green hands gesture, although that sure looks like the latest version of the finger-and-thumb W the Badger fans currently flash.

Yes, Miami got to rock the bling early in the game (with a little help from instant replay) and after a few big plays and Miami taking a 14-3 lead, the ESPN announcers were getting into their usual patter about Southern teams and "athleticism" and "outside speed" and "five-star recruits."

Wisconsin linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel correctly anticipated a pass, giving Wisconsin the ball on Miami's 21.  Turnover battle even.  Wisconsin went on to score, and score again, and score again, going into the locker room leading 24-14.  Quarterback Alex Hornibrook gave the impression of a left-handed Aaron Rodgers for much of the game, making accurate passes in tight quarters.  Come the third quarter, and a Miami rally, cornerback Derrick Tindal intercepts a pass in the end zone: lead of 24-21 holds.  Badgers leading on turnovers.  At the end, another Wisconsin interception closes the game out.

Here's how Miami Herald scribe Walter Villa saw it.

Miami was expecting Georgia Tech but got Oklahoma.

In other words, the 10th-ranked Hurricanes, who lost the Orange Bowl 34-24 to the No. 6 Wisconsin Badgers on Saturday night at Hard Rock Stadium, never would’ve thought that their defense would get beat by sophomore Alex Hornibrook, a pedestrian passer who was named the game’s MVP.

After all, Wisconsin running back Jonathan Taylor entered the game with 1,847 yards and broke NFL star Adrian Peterson’s NCAA rushing record for a freshman in the game. Miami was surely expecting a ground attack, a la Georgia Tech.

On Saturday, however, Hornibrook made like Oklahoma’s Heisman Trophy-winning Baker Mayfield, completing 23-of-34 passes for a season-best 258 yards, a career-best four touchdowns and no interceptions as the Badgers (13-1) completed the first 13-win season in program history.

Mr Villa, can you say Aaron Rodgers? And ... glass half full department ... that late 1960s decline of the Packers came a few years after the mid-1960 decline of the Badgers. The mid-1990s revival of the Packers came a few years after the Badgers won a Rose Bowl.  And for all that talk about team speed, well, let Miami quarterback Malik Rosier have the final word.  “One time, the first interception I had, it was a great job by the guy. [Left tackle K. C.] McDermott tried to cut [Andrew Van Ginkel]. He did a great job getting his hands up and the ball just unfortunately wound up hitting him. They were fast, they were physical and they just did a great job of making me throw low-percentage passes.’’

THE COFFEE FUND IS DEPLETED.

A DeKalb sports pundit suggests the little tin box has been unlocked a few too many times.

The problem: five years of underachieving football, where achieving means winning bowl games.

After a terrible fake punt call and another postseason blowout, this time a 36-14 loss to Duke on Tuesday in the Quick Lane Bowl, new leadership would help. If this were the Bears, I’d urge George McCaskey to immediately fire the head coach – the way Hub Arkush has been doing.

But the Huskies play for a public university that already has spent its buyout budget this year. Even if NIU has the cash to make a coaching change, it lacks the political capital.

Earlier this year, the board of trustees had to vote – twice – to pay former Mismanager-in-Chief Doug Baker a severance worth $600,000. They took heat for that golden parachute from politicians, the public and the news media.

Baker’s $450,000 salary was nowhere near the $623,000 Carey will earn in 2017. It would cost the school about $950,000 to buy out Carey’s contract, according to USA Today.

If NIU spends more than $1.5 million on buyouts in a year, it’ll be clobbered with that fact any time financial issues arise – and rightly so.

Maybe NIU officials should just do what they’re doing with the president’s job – say they’re not going to hire or sign anyone until 2019, when Carey’s contract will expire.

Then, if Carey leads the Huskies through the gauntlet of nonconference foes scheduled for 2018 – at Iowa, Florida State and BYU, plus a home date with Utah – and comes out with even two wins, maybe he stays.

That's right, Northern Illinois continue to schedule highly regarded teams, and they have enough of a history winning such games, including at least one at Iowa in the past few years, and they earn bowl games with opponents you might have heard of, when it comes to the bowl games themselves, it's not so pretty.

THE WEAKEST PART MUST STAND THE STRAIN.

Fifty years ago, the Green Bay Packers closed out 1967 with the Ice Bowl.

Green Bay went 9-4-1 in ’67 and limped into the playoffs on the heels of season-ending losses to the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers. Hall of Fame running backs Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung were gone. So, too, was the team’s aura of invincibility. This was an aging team that had lost key players to injury.

That's right, I'm not going to have another wallow in the past today.

Rather, I want you, dear reader, to reflect on the wonderful one-hoss shay.  There was one more, anti-climactic thumping of the Oakland Raiders followed by Vince Lombardi, for a year, serving as general manager, at the beginning of a quarter century of futility.

WHAT IS HONEST NEVER SINKS.

We'll finish the Fifty Book Challenge for this year a bit short of our goal, at Book Review N^o. 31.  Michael McCarthy's Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck that Shook America looks at some of the personalities involved in Eastland's capsize and the subsequent investigation.  Mr McCarthy (of Grand Haven, not to be confused with an embattled football coach with a season turned to ashes on the west shore of Lake Michigan) stays away from the technical material, much of which has already been covered, and well, by Jay Bonasinga in The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy and by George Hilton in  Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic.  But did you know that flamboyant trial lawyer Clarence Darrow was defending architect Frank L. Wright against a Mann Act violation?  (These days, we drop people from the canon or from polite society, sometimes retrospectively, for less.  Imagine architectural history without Wright.)  And that Eastland chief engineer Joseph Erickson relied on the bit of Norse folk wisdom that provides this review with its title to ultimately be cleared of any charges stemming from the capsize?  For that matter, have you considered that water ballast might be a necessary evil in a boat that must sometimes navigate channels subject to the caprices of wind, current, and sand?  Or that Kenesaw Mountain Landis, not yet commissioner of baseball, owed his name to a lost leg?  For the more substantive stuff, read the book.

Thus did I find Ashes Under Water a useful complement to the aforementioned technical works, and thus do I close my chronicles of this most interesting year.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

UNLEASH THE CONTROVERSIES.

Here I had hoped to close out the year with lighter, more cheerful fare, and yet even the football gods work against me. Packers must move on from Dom Capers.

Receivers, tight ends and running backs running free, defensive linemen jumping offside, and maybe the worst of all, quarterback Cam Newton caught on television telling linebacker Clay Matthews before the snap, “You’ve been watching film, huh? Watch this.”

“This” turned out to be Newton throwing to halfback Christian McCaffrey running uncovered over the middle for an easy touchdown while the Packers bungled a coverage they had worked on during the week.

The die is cast and McCarthy has no choice but to fire Capers and begin searching for someone who can pull together the talent the Packers have on defense.

With the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings riding strong defenses and replacement quarterbacks into the playoffs, and the Chicago Bears sweeping their games with the AFL teams they played this year, the discontent is only going to grow.  I'll hold off on any more football postings until next year.

TEACH THE CONTROVERSIES.

That's long been a theme of mine, as to a naive view, all this talk in economics courses about "markets" and "prices" and "firms" and "competition" is a celebration of the existing commercial order.  Sorry, no.

Contrast the introspection in economics with the lack of self-reflection in this lament by a zampolit from Beloit College.

Many of us are trained to see and then speak on institutional and structural systems of oppression. I have been trained specifically to see and call out institutional racism through an intersectional lens. If we are being told to just do our job, then we are. So the real question becomes, is society ready to accept the true point of an education, which is to develop a group of critically thinking, conscious citizens? Is higher education ready and capable of taking on this work?

Sorry, lady, you're guilty of affirming the consequent, rather than treating intersectionality as one among many working hypotheses, and labelling disparate outcomes as institutional racism without considering other possible, perhaps stronger explanations for those outcomes.  Put together a set of hypotheses involving intersectionality that yield clearer explanations and let the logic and content carry the day.  But that's work.  Easier to hector and deplorable-shame.

As educators, it is our job to teach students how to think critically so that they can engage with larger social issues. That is not confined to just the social sciences, but has an impact on all academic disciplines and departments. Yet as [James] Baldwin also said, society is not always that anxious to have a mass of critically thinking and engaged people, because “what societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.” That is why education matters more so now than ever as a location that should be unapologetically committed to developing students to become true critically engaged thinkers who learn how to apply those knowledges, methodologies and skills to locations outside spaces like this.

It is on college and university campuses, and within our classrooms and through our programming, where resistance to this encroaching normalized white supremacist ideology must be challenged. Now is not the time to side with neutrality.

Seriously? You're going to deconstruct the old rules by imposing your own rules, and saying now is not the time to consider other rules?  The good news, dear reader, is that at least one commenter at Inside Higher Ed caught the strange loop being tied.

Our goal is to have the campus and community understand what organizing and activism are, why individuals and groups participate in these practices, and what possibilities there are or can be when we engage in other ways of knowing and being. In doing so, we hope conversations and actions move away from partisanship and into understandings of what we want humanity to be. What humanity should be.

"What humanity should be." That way await the guillotines and gulags.  So it always is with people who are so wedded to their priors that to ask "what evidence would lead you to change your mind?" is heresy.

PREACH THE CONTROVERSIES.

Because of the way the televisions schedules came out for Christmas Eve, I was able to compare-and-contrast midnight mass, as recorded by NBC for rebroadcast from Vatican City, and as covered live by WGN from Chicago (and made available to cable subscribers across the United States.)

The Vatican bureaucracy, doing what it does best, appears to have circulated a rubric and suggested preaching points for the message, whether delivered by the Pontifex Maximus, by a Cardinal Archbishop, by a bishop, or by a parish priest in a remote settlement: and each has similar responsibilities, station or rank notwithstanding, during the service.

Perhaps, though, the order of worship involved that advice from Rome.  Both the Vatican and the Chicago services began with an add-on, the Christmas Proclamation, which the rules stipulate may not replace any other part of the service, although this may be chanted (both the Vatican and Chicago had people skilled in this art) or read (and in a smaller community, entrusted to the local Linus van Pelt?)  I had never heard this before, and it's intriguing.  An excerpt.  "[I]n the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the foundation of the City of Rome; in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace." Go tell it on the mountain. I'm probably doing the kind of thing that got my fourteenth great-grandfather tossed out of the Anglican Communion to point out that Augustus reigned forty years.

Among the readings, the Augustinian theme continues.  Luke 2, as chanted in Latin, read in English, and dramatized by Linus.  Augustus's census, when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.

In both services, there were readings and prayers in multiple languages.  On NBC, a church representative offered simultaneous translations into English.  On WGN, there were English subtitles, allowing a listener to work on his command of other languages.  I commend WGN for providing the captions rather than the voice-overs.  Alas, contemporary translations, whether closed-captioned or spoken, don't have the resonance and the rhythm of the King James Bible.  Dear reader, you cannot write good English prose without having read and listened to Shakespeare and to the King James Bible.  The committee that wrote the Revised Standard Version at least got that right.  Winston Churchill's speeches show that training.  The too-soon-departed editor of Trains, David P. Morgan, was the son of a British-born Presbyterian minister, and you could pick that up without knowing his biography.

The message, perhaps with some advice from Pope Francis, emphasized two components of the story as told by Luke.  "No room for them in the inn" indicates Joseph, of the house and lineage of David, being rejected by his own kind.  Perhaps, although humans under the same roof as animals was the reality for most of the population until recently, and "inn" refers to a tavern with perhaps some sleeping accommodations.  Think Tabard Inn of The Canterbury Tales; or Holiday Inn with a sales convention in town during the Mad Men era; or Quality Inn in a warm climate during spring break; or Hampton Inn hosting a big wedding party.  These days, we have hospitals and clinics to keep the children, and the near-to-term moms, away from the roistering.  Not so much in an era when fresh fish might be a special treat, and the tax-collector might be even more reviled than he is today.

Speaking of fresh fish, let us reflect on the shepherds, who in this year's message are "marginalized people."  There is a special circle in hell for anyone who introduces these culture-studies terms into ordinary discourse.  But didn't anybody in Francis I's staff remember who the Great Shepherd is?  On earth, if those men are not keeping the wolves, and the Saracens, away from the flock, those loaves and fishes will have to be stretched even further.  Count your blessings, and let's at least have a message that is more attuned to realities, back in the day, and these days.

But perhaps I should not carp.  This year, there were fewer people holding up their smart 'phones to record the processional in Rome, and the one discordant note in Chicago featured a parishioner turning around to snap a selfie as the Cardinal Archbishop passed by during the recessional.  I got the sense, though, that there were a lot of people present at the Vatican for the experience.  Chicagoans who stay up late into the night are going to make a joyful noise and bring an offering, and when you have some very lively censer-swinging and the Cardinal Archbishop belting out "O come let us adore him" for the microphone to send urbi et orbi, why not?  Oh, and working "kingdom" and "power" and "glory forever" into the closing prayer.  Those used to be fighting words.

LOOKS LIKE CHRISTMAS.

This year's vintage trains run at prototype speeds.  There's also a tease of the serious models.

Is that hopper car empty because everyone was good, or is it going back to the mine for more coal?

Thanks to all for looking in, and to all a good night.

FROM THE RUINS OF THE NORTH STAR CONFERENCE.

Once upon a time, in a basketball universe far away, the women's teams of DePaul, Northern Illinois, Notre Dame, and Wisconsin-Green Bay played in a common conference.  (Football I know was another matter and I don't recall the details for men's basketball.)

EVERY VALLEY SHALL BE VAULTED.

German Rail completes the München to Berlin fast railroad, a project that could only be possible with the Cold War over.  The new service is time-competitive with air, and faster (and less nerve-wracking) than driving.

Trains use existing stations and urban trackage, with the fast lines giving the impression of a souped up Lackawanna Cutoff or Long Drag (to think of two rail lines where policy makers swallowed the highway lobby's blandishments.)

Three separate 187.5-mph high speed lines opened between 2006 and 2017 with three other sections of existing line connecting the new high speed lines rebuilt for operation at up to 144 mph. All the major stations on the route have also been modernized.

The 67-mile long section opening this month was the most complex to build as most of it cuts through — or under — the hills of the Thüringen Forest. Of the 67-mile length of the route, more than a third, or 25.6 miles, is in tunnels built for 187.5-mph operation with 7.5 miles of bridges and viaducts as well. The Erfurt to Ebensfeld section has cost about $12 billion and work was stopped for several years in the late 1990s due to a shortage of funding.

The line has been built for mixed use with freight permitted and passing loops [double-ended sidings -- ed.] to allow ICE trains to overtake freight trains. So far no freight has operated as access tolls are higher than the regular network.

Services on the new line are being operated using the existing Deutsche Bahn ICE fleet which has been fitted with cab signalling [positive train control] to operate on the new line.

The modern German style of viaduct (Miniatur Wunderland have at least one model in action) gives the impression of a minimalist Nicholson Viaduct.  But unlike the promoters of the Chicago-New York Electric Air Line (which figured in a Christmas video a few years back) they're not building a dead-straight, dead-level railroad.

Freight train operations are restricted by day, although I can report at least one delay enroute Hamburg from Nürnberg account freight train interference.

REMEMBERING HUNTER HARRISON.

The CSX Railroad announced last Thursday that operations guru and former Illinois Central, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific chief E. Hunter Harrison would be taking medical leave.  He crossed the final summit on Saturday.

Harrison began his career in 1963 as a carman-oiler with the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad, while he was still in high school. During his career, he became famous for applying the "scheduled railroad" concept to railroads to improve their operating efficiency.

The scheduled railroad concept is straightforward enough. Trains are made up of cars that are moving cargo from a shipper to a consignee.  Take care of serving the shippers, and the trains will take care of themselves.

Hunter Harrison learned railroading at the knee of a brilliant, profane Texan, William (Pisser Bill) Thompson, who was on his way to becoming VP-operations of the Frisco in the late 1960s when Hunter encountered him at Tennessee Yard in Memphis. “Young man,” said Thompson, spreading his arm toward a sea of freight cars, “what do you see out there?” “A lot of good business, Mr. Thompson,” replied Harrison. Retorted Thompson: “What? Good business? See, that’s the difference, Hunter. I see a bunch of delayed cars, and you say it’s good business.”

He took that lesson to heart, although Trains columnist Fred Frailey sees strengths and weaknesses.

Harrison learned inventory control and asset utilization. Later, within Burlington Northern’s Seattle Region, he tried before others did to run individual cars strictly by schedule, thereby getting better utilization of equipment, including locomotives. Later still, running operations at Illinois Central, he put into practice all the ideas that had been brewing within him, including balance—if you run a train east, run one west, and better yet, have them meet mid-way and swap crews, thereby ending away-from-home expenses. He later did his magic at Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, and upon his death was eight months into a remaking of CSX.

So a genius at railroad operations, yes. But was the man a genius at running a railroad? Running a railroad, after all, is about more than running trains. You have to consider retaining your customers and finding new ones, dealing with government, building high morale and on and on and on. No, he was not a genius, and in fact I would call the man merely ordinary in some aspects of being a chief executive and deficient in a few critical areas. To say this does not detract one iota from the respect I have always shown for him. We are all imperfect creatures.

His latest project, CSX,  might have posed a different set of challenges.  Back to Mr Frailey.

Did Harrison put the railroad on the right path or leave it in shambles, having ripped its practices and institutional knowledge almost to shreds while not living long enough to build a new foundation? I wish the former but suspect the latter.

His former colleague at CN and now his successor at CSX, Jim Foote, has his work cut out. I interviewed Foote in 2009 and thought him whip-smart and funny (meaning a quick thinker).  Nowhere in his background is experience in operations. And operations is where CSX now stands exposed.

Lastly, I wish Hunter Harrison had been better teaching people how to think like him than he was, through his Hunter Camps, to act like him. It’s an important distinction. In other words, you can tell me what to do (Hunter Camps) but how do I learn to think like you? Maybe that is our biggest loss.

The succession in the executive suite, or at quarterback, matters, and yet there is a lot of precision transportation that relies on alert sales agents, billing clerks, and dispatchers.

SEASON'S END.

The Green Bay Packers will not be going into Christmas with a playoff on the line.

Not with that defense. Not with that lack of commitment to the run. Not with so few impact players.

The Packers were 28 yards away from playing a third straight overtime game and possibly pulling out a season-saving victory over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday at Bank of America Stadium.

But it was just a tease because since winning Super Bowl XLV they have been neither good enough nor talented enough to do more than put up a good front week after week.

If Aaron Rodgers had led the offense to a second touchdown in less than 3 minutes and the Packers had won the coin flip in overtime and scored a touchdown to pull out a miracle victory to improve to 8-6, it would have been merely a reprieve.

Perhaps the fans and the sports pundits will express enough discontent for headquarters to address weaknesses on the team that don't involve injured quarterbacks.

It would have lasted until the Minnesota Vikings or Detroit Lions or some playoff opponent brought them back to reality with a slap in the face. They would have packed up their bags, noted how close they got again and then gotten ready to do it again.

General manager Ted Thompson’s anachronistic approach to talent acquisition has left them exposed at one specific position or area of athleticism or facet of the game at the end of every season since the Packers won their 13th championship in February 2011.

Every year it seems, they overcome a slew of injuries, rally to win the division or make the playoffs and then have their weaknesses picked at until it’s time to congratulate the opposition for moving on.

Apart from the aforementioned Super Bowl season, and the repeated failure of special teams in Seattle, those weaknesses tend to have been on defense.  Heck, it was the Packers who made Colin Kaepernick a phenomenon for a couple of years.  Just line up and tackle people.

Thus endeth an eight year run of Packers playing in the post-season.  There was one prior such run, although nobody makes much of it. Lose to Philadelphia.  Defeat New York.  Defeat New York.  Defeat Cleveland^(p).  Lose to St. Louis^(p).  Defeat Baltimore^(d) and Cleveland.  Defeat Dallas and Kansas City^(*).  Defeat Los Angeles, Dallas, and Oakland^(*).

The footsteps of giants.  "There is something Lambeau and Lombardi accomplished that subsequent head coaches have not yet done."

My wish for 2018: that the Packers fix their problems on defense, and continue to pay attention to the succession at quarterback (Boy, did I miss that one, but I'm not complaining).  I still have bad memories of a battered Bart Starr coming out to attempt to salvage one more season, one more run at Bud Grant and the Vikings, only to leave more racked-up.

^(p) Playoff Bowl.  Vince Lombardi referred to this game as hinky-dinky, and it vanished with the divisional alignment.

^(d) Western Conference playoff game.  No tie-break formulas in those days.

^(*) The anti-climactic interleague bragging rights game that only later became the Super Bowl.  I think the name for that game originated with the name of the biggest entree at Chili John's.

PERSISTENCE.

Northern Illinois guard Paulina Castro returns to the lineup.

“[Paulina] is inspirational,” junior guard Mikayla Voigt said as she tried to hold back tears. “The fact that she was able to keep such a positive attitude through all of that and still be such a big supporter for the team and then come back to be healthy again and able to play basketball, it’s truly a miracle. I mean I don’t think it’s anything short of that.”

Castro continues to maintain a positive attitude, as she is now contributing both on and off the court. Carlsen said Castro taught her and the entire team a life lesson during her journey.

“It gets better,” said Castro. “You know there are days when you feel like ‘wow, this sucks’, but it gets better and that is something that I learned. You learn to appreciate even the smallest of things when you don’t know how the next day is going to go. I think that is why basketball was such an escape for me was because I just learned to appreciate it so much more.”

Just go read the story.