HARVESTING GAINS FROM TRADE.

Perhaps "transit oriented development" is something better understood as an emergent phenomenon than as something the boffins can draw up for the town planners.  That might be behind Brightline's thinking in Florida.  "Brightline launches process to add station north of West Palm Beach." You add too many stops, you give away some of the advantages of higher speeds, and yet, running past potential riders leaves money on the table.  That talk of process, alas, is obligatory, as the town planners and politicians will have to wet their beaks.

The company will accept proposals from private or public land owners along the Brightline/Florida East Coast rail line in the two counties that meet qualifications outlined in the RFP, and has set private, one-one-one meetings with eligible applicants for Nov.28 for applicants in St. Lucie County and Nov. 29 in Martin County. Proposal submissions are due Dec. 22.

“We’re excited to begin the process of identifying a station location in the Treasure Coast and have seen tremendous support from the local community,” Brightline CEO Michael Reininger said in a press release. “Expanding Brightline into the Treasure Coast region will make Brightline one of the most accessible forms of transportation in Florida, giving access to nearly half of the state’s residents.”

The Request for Proposals, available here, seeks a site of at least 2 acres with the ability to accommodate 200 parking spaces and a platform of at least 500 feet, among other requirements. It projects a site will be selected in the first quarter of 2024, with the design, environmental, and permitting process proceeding through 2025 and construction beginning in 2026, with the station opening in the first quarter of 2028.

Got that? Four and a half years to set up a lineside station?  Over a year to accomplish construction once all those processes proceed through all the processing.  It takes a special sort of patient capital to wait that long to be able to cash in on whatever revenue a mixed-use project including relatively simple associated uses such as a coffee house, saloon, or rental or sale housing will bring in.

THE KILLJOYS NEVER REST.

After gutting the itinerant circus, they're going after the rodeo.

Which groups are behind the anti-rodeo pushes? Townhall readers will recognize two familiar groups.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) - a serial alarmist organization - is a big proponent of rodeo bans, writing on their website: “Countless animals have paid with their lives to satisfy humans’ desire to play cowboy in events such as calf roping, bull riding, steer wrestling, and bronc riding.

PETA also advocates banning the American pastime by urging its supporters to “work to institute a state or local ban on calf roping, the event in which cruelty is most easily documented. Since many rodeo circuits require calf roping, eliminating it can result in the overall elimination of rodeo shows.”

Animal Legal Defense Fund is a litigious outfit behind the bans. The group is also vehemently against predator management, hunting, and wildlife management.

Predator management?  Yeah, let's take the side of the bear and wolves on the range.  I can think of no strategy more likely to turn county fairs into safe spaces for Normals than they already are.

That's the presentation of colors before the Big Hat Rodeo opened its performance at the Ogle County Fair, first weekend in August.  The rodeo shares some show elements with the itinerant circus, including equestrian performances and clowns getting into the act.  (And yes, there were Wild West themed itinerant circuses as well as Wild West acts to sell more popcorn while the clowns and aerialists were packing up and loading out.)  Plus country girls in their short shorts and cowboy boots cheering for their friends riding for their 4-H clubs.

Calf roping and bronco riding, though?  How did these geniuses think horses got domesticated, or beeves got rounded up?  That is, the rodeo is a competition showcasing the skills involved in ranching and herding.  Oh, and sometimes the calf gets the better of the rider.

Columnist Gabriella Hoffman concludes, "Rodeo, like hunting and fishing, is pure Americana. It must be protected and preserved at all costs."  Lest all of those entertainments or pursuits go the way of the itinerant circus with elephants and big cats.

I GOTTA LAY OFF THE IPA, I SAW TINY TRAINS UNDER THAT BRIDGE!

No, they've been there a long time, it's only that Walker's Point has gone from where Barry truck drivers and foundrymen go for a beer after work to the latest trendy place.  The latest metrofexual media outlet to discover that model railroad club is Milwaukee's public radio station.

Today, on Bubbler Talk, we're clearing up a mystery for local listener Monique Balistreri, who says she was out socializing on E. National Ave., and came upon an odd-looking building underneath elevated train tracks.

"And I randomly looked through the windows one night and was incredibly surprised by just this miniature town and train track," Balistreri tells WUWM.

The reporting echoes what the local newspaper reported five years ago.  The radio guys brought their contemporary technology along, and stumbled upon some seriously retro guys and even more retro technology.

Model trains roll through at least three rooms. Past tiny towns, miniature buildings, trees, rocks, bridges, billboards, and many other created bits of scenery.

At the controls, sitting in an area above the tracks is a club member we've agreed to call The Operator. He's a shy, but pleasant man. We ask about the electrical devices his left and right hands are operating.

The conversation went like this:

"So what's in your left hand?
"Oh, it's a rheostat."
"A rheostat?"
"Yes, it takes 18 volts direct current and meters it down to whatever speed you want."
"And what is your right hand controlling?"
"The block power. Right now, we're in block 11 and we're going to go into block 12."
"The portion of the track?"
"Yes, the single track is about eight scale miles broken into 19 different blocks.''

The Operator explains the divisions mean you don't need electricity going to all of the track at the same time.

In fact, before digital command control, the only way to operate more than one train at a time, and to have trains going in opposing directions meet safely, you had to assign power block by block.  It's possible that this club, should it attract younger members for the future, will go directly from 1950s vintage block control (that control stand on the stairs that used to lead to trackside ought be listed as an electrical engineering heritage site) to onboard power and radio control.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Academia delenda est.  "Harvard unabashedly shot from admitting brain power to brain dead in the blink of an eye."  We're on to the scam.  "While our modern academic class is largely parasitical and counter-useful, they have perfected the art of self-serving logical gymnastics."  We're done turning over the wampum.  "What is the point of having f*** you money if you don’t say f*** you? Especially to people who hate you while taking your money?"

If ignorance is a disease, Harvard Yard is the Wuhan wet market. pic.twitter.com/BKDBUZbcZm

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) October 21, 2023

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

THAT CONTINUAL AND FEARLESS SIFTING AND WINNOWING.

Is the Hamas-mania on display at institutions of higher learning you might have heard of the evidence that convinces the people that our universities are being run by terminally stupid people?  Campus Reform contributor Rob Jenkins suggests it might be.  First, he submits a bill of particulars.

What’s to blame for this sad state of affairs? Competition from the private sector? Budget-slashing politicians? Students who are just too dumb to know what’s good for them?

No. The main culprit is the institutions themselves, individually and collectively. As Obi-Wan Kenobi told Annakin Skywalker, when the young Jedi blamed his former mentor for the loss of his beloved Princess Padme, “You have done that yourself.”

Colleges and universities have driven away students, and are on the verge of making themselves irrelevant, because they have abandoned their core mission of pursuing and disseminating truth. Instead, they insist reality is both subjective and malleable and objective truth does not exist.

It’s as if the American Dental Association suddenly announced that tooth decay is no longer a thing, thereby repudiating its own raison d’etre. How long would the profession survive?

But it’s worse than that. Colleges don’t just waffle on truth; they actively embrace lies. Like the lie that any racial disparity must be due solely to ingrained “systemic racism.” Or the lie that “gender is on a spectrum.” Or the lie that “transwomen are women.”

Transgressivity for its own sake eventually undermines higher education's credibility.

Colleges have become so invested in these “narratives”—which any rational person can see are false—that they have lost all credibility with wide swaths of the population. What is the advantage of an “education” if practically everything you “learn” simply isn’t true?

These last few weeks, however, may drive the final nail into the proverbial coffin, as many institutions have revealed to the world that they not only eschew truth and embrace lies—they reject common decency and actively celebrate evil.

I am referring, of course, to the way campuses like Harvard, Stanford, and Penn (just to name a few) have reacted to the slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians, including children, by Hamas terrorists: pro-Hamas rallies, social media posts from terrorist-sympathizing faculty, anodyne “both sides” statements penned by morally bankrupt administrators.

The mask has been ripped off; they ripped it off themselves. It is now beyond dispute that most “institutions of higher learning” are no longer about learning, nor are they “higher” than, say, your average bloodthirsty street mob. They are radical left-wing indoctrination centers, pure and simple, and everyone can see it—including, as it turns out, wealthy donors.

Left-wing indoctrination? Suppose what he interprets as indoctrination might be asking difficult questions, which is notionally why we have the universities in the first place.

EMBRACE THE DECLINE?

Dilbert creator Scott Adams gets off what might otherwise be a Friday short take.  “We’ve conflated politics and bad mental health until they are indistinguishable.”  The elaboration, by James "Long Emergency" Kunstler might be overthinking the blinging out of houses for Hallowe'en.

By some hidden working of unseen forces, legions of ghouls and demons are bursting out of the ground in every other front yard of small-town America. Supposedly hard-up working-class people go all-out constructing Halloween shrines to the totem figures of decay and death, as in some depraved cargo cult competition aimed at hastening our country’s descent into chaos. The end can’t come soon enough, seems to be the message. Something in the zeitgeist is prompting us to do this.

Year to year, these morbid displays of slavering werewolves, hooded skeletons, grinning mummies, pirate corpses, horned devils, giant spiders, flapping crows, and glowing skulls far surpass in scale the once-exuberant displays of Christmas time — as if to say the celebration of horror and terror has way more meaning in America these days than the message of peace-on-earth, angels-on-high, the boundless generosity of Santa Claus, and the humble birth of a loving god. Kind of reminds you of what Mr. Dylan said more than a half-century ago: “…he not busy being born is busy dying.”

This Halloween month, America looks super-busy preparing for the death of something, maybe itself.

That's possible, although the extravagant decorations with orange icicle lights and inflatables became a thing just before the collapse of Communism in Europe, and maybe cheap Chinese decorations, and now solar panel subsidies, had something to do with it.

THE PICNIC GOES UPSCALE?

A recent promotional message from Menard's (an occupational hazard of having building supplies delivered) included a clearance sale on picnic kits.  Insulated hamper, side compartment for the utensils, and space for what the advert describes as "everything needed for a picnic for 4 people."  Specifically, "4 plates, 4 cups, 4 sets of utensils, a salt & pepper shaker, a cutting board, and a corkscrew."  Those four cups?  Stemware.  The hamper has two compartments, "Can store 2 bottles of wine standing upright."

The mind boggles at the thought of Yogi Bear getting into a pick-a-nick basket like that.  Hey-hey-hey-hic!

IS IT GOOD NEWS OR BAD NEWS?

Real Clear Politics contributor Peter Berkowitz opens up a can on academia.  "Campus Backing of Hamas Condemns U.S. Higher Education."

It is not university administrators’ job to opine on behalf of their institutions on the great issues of the day. However, after decades of taking sides, usually supporting decidedly progressive causes and priorities, it is grotesque for university presidents and deans to only discover the virtue of institutional neutrality following Hamas jihadists’ massacre of at least 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians.

Nor is it university administrators’ responsibility to police speech and prosecute thought crimes. Yet it took student and faculty expressions of enthusiasm for Hamas’ 10/7 attacks and a rush to defend the jihadists’ crimes against humanity for university administrators to find their voices and come to free speech’s defense. Those crimes included mass murder of young Israelis at a music festival and of citizens of all ages in their homes near Israel’s Gaza border (Americans and others were also executed in cold blood), rape, desecration of corpses, and abduction of approximately 200 mostly Israeli civilians but including Americans and other nation’s citizens.

Some questions are not hard. University administrators should condemn a savage onslaught on civilian populations designed to wipe out a nation. Individual rights, toleration, and the rule of law are of no account to Hamas, which seeks Israel’s destruction. But they are the lifeblood of American constitutional government and liberal education.

Moreover, apart from a few established exceptions such as the incitement to imminent violence, outside the classroom faculty may spew venom and students may express despicable sentiments, offer grossly ignorant opinions, and utter outright lies. Most of the appalling speech on campus since October 7 in defense of Hamas’ ghastly brutality is protected, both as a matter of constitutional law and as a requirement of liberal education.

The hard question is, how have our colleges and universities come to shelter so many individuals – students and professors – who cheer on monstrous acts?

The presidents and provosts ought to pipe down.  The professors ought respect the conventions of scholarly inquiry.

The students?  Is it that their jive detectors are working, that they treat pronouncements from the president like compulsory chapel, or that they are partying hearty?

Two-thirds of American college students who knew about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel said they view it as an act of terrorism, while only 12 percent said it was a “justified act of resistance,” according to a Generation Lab flash poll of 978 two- and four-year college students taken days after the attack, NBC News reported.

Additionally, 52 percent of those surveyed blamed Hamas for the attack; 11 percent blamed it on Israel, 12 percent blamed other Middle Eastern governments and 25 percent held someone else at fault.

Republican students and white students were more likely to place the blame on Hamas than students who identify as Democrats and students of color.

According to Generation Lab, the statistics refute the idea, created by pervasive media coverage of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses, that most students consider the attack justified.

"Republican students" as opposed to "students who identify as Democrats." Never change, Inside Higher Ed.

INADVERTENTLY ACKNOWLEDGING THE CULT OF THE PRESIDENCY.

Rebecca Gordon confronts the tension between national greatness conservatism and libertarian conservatism.

Sometimes the right wing in this country seems like a riddle wrapped in an enigma encased in a conundrum.

Do they want to strengthen the government in line with the once-fringe doctrine of the “unitary executive,” concentrating most official power in the hands of a president who would then rule more or less by fiat? That’s the fascist position.

Or would they prefer to destroy the government, to “starve the beast,” something anti-tax activist Grover Norquist used to call for decades ago? “I don’t want to abolish government,” he declared. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” That’s the anti-government nihilist position.

That's a tension as old as the Republic itself.

THOSE INSURGENT SOCIOLOGISTS, ETERNALLY SEEKING OPPRESSED MASCOTS.

The latest mascots are, predictably, Hamas's constituents. "Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People." William Donohue, a sociologist himself, has reservations about the way the letter opens.

I stopped being embarrassed years ago about my fellow sociologists—I simply gave up on most of them. But I never gave up on sociology. They did. They are nothing but left-wing ideologues disguised as sociologists. Indeed, they don’t even know what sociology is.

“Sociology as a discipline is rooted in a recognition of relationships of power and inequality.” That’s how the letter begins. They are wrong. That is not an accurate definition. What they are describing is social stratification and political sociology, two areas of study within sociology (which happen to be the focus of my own sociological work).

Emile Durkheim, who did more to make sociology a legitimate social science than anyone else, was proud to call sociology the “queen of the social sciences.” In capable hands, it still is. He wrote that “the object of sociology as a whole is to determine the conditions for the conservation of societies.” That is clearly not what motivates these charlatans. As left-wing activists, they are more interested in destroying Western societies than they are in conserving them.

Gary Becker and Paul Samuelson might have something to say about queenship in the social sciences, and that passage about "conditions for the conservation of societies," meaning the continued existence of those societies qua societies raises the possibility that "reality is socially conservative" might have promise as a working hypothesis for sociologists.

It's Hallowe'en season.  I can't promise a tarot reading or an Ouija board session to receive new wisdom from Professor Becker or Professor Samuelson.  That Durkheim passage suggests that the contemporary division of the academy into the laboratory sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities might be counterproductive.  That's material for another day.

THE RETURN OF THE FRANCHISE TRIP.

Mike Nichols of the Badger Institute finds the latest iteration of demonstrating the folly of a rule by complying with it down by the Couture where the streetcar bends the corner around. "Milwaukee city officials are going to run their streetcars, part of the $128 million Hop, through a closed construction site on Sundays, and Sundays only, throughout the winter in order to satisfy the requirements of a federal grant."  Let the political finger-pointing continue!

In the internal email copied to a number of Department of Public Works employees, including Commissioner Jerrel Kruschke, Rothgery wrote that the Badger Institute has “an ongoing ‘boondoggle’ narrative that they are trying to maintain.”

That’s only partially true.

We’ve actually called it “a slow-motion boondoggle,” a “classic boondoggle,” a “flop” and a “financial anvil” — though we borrowed those last words from an alderman concerned about the need for local money to supplement the federal grants. Oh, we also quoted Milwaukeeans who called it “the biggest waste of tax dollars I’ve ever seen,” “a tiny project with astronomical cost,” and “a nuisance.”

That boondoggle has changed hands more frequently than a bus pass on Saturday.  But wait, there's more.

The Couture is being built on the former site of what was widely acknowledged to have been a colossal, federally funded white elephant — the Downtown Transit Center on Michigan Avenue near the lakefront — that was hardly ever used and was eventually torn down.

“Everyone who was involved with it knew it would never work as a downtown transit center,” Kenneth Yunker, former executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, told the Badger Institute. “It was a transit center in name only. It was a bus-marshaling center the FTA was willing to fund but only if it included a waiting room.”

The transit center sat empty for a quarter-century until the county agreed to sell it to Barrett for $500,000. Only there was a catch. Because it was developed using federal money, the deal needed the approval of the Federal Transit Administration.

The FTA did approve the sale, but only on the condition the site be used for “another (transportation) capital project” — the streetcar. The only way to avoid paying the federal government back, in other words, was extending the streetcar to the site.

Once upon a time, there was a transit center there, with a waiting room, and with streetcars looping the block around.

That lakefront railroad station had to go, because there was federal money to build an expressway that was never built, and then came the federal money to build that transit center in the space where the expressway was never built. "The transportation center (mostly a parking deck) will come down to make space for a 44 story apartment tower.  Perhaps some of the people moving up from the middle class will occupy space there.  But they won't have a 75 minute Commuter 400 with the best griddle cakes on earth leaving from lake level."

It's all too much for National Review contributor Dominic Pino (a Cafe Hayek link), who cracks wise.

So one federally funded boondoggle led to another federally funded boondoggle, and now to keep the money coming in, Milwaukee is opening a streetcar line to a construction site one day a week during Wisconsin winter. Your tax dollars at work.

Make that "one federally funded boondoggle" (the expressway) leading to "another federally funded boondoggle" (the transit center) leading to the latest "federally funded boondoggle," the streetcar bending the corner around in the lobby of the Couture Apartments, which I believe are private enterprise.

Contemporary progressivism, spending money to undo the works of previous progressivism, unto the first generation.

A CASE FOR LIMITING GOVERNMENT?

I understand the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives got their act together long enough to elect a Speaker of the House.  Over the weekend, Outside the Beltway's Steven Taylor looked at the sausage-making and despaired.

There are a variety of reasons to be unhappy with the current inability of the House Republican caucus to elect a Speaker of the House, including the rather obvious fact that electing a leader is one of the most fundamental legislative tasks for the majority party to perform. Indeed, it is a massive signal of the utter dysfunction of the party that they cannot organize themselves in this most basic of ways. In a rigid two-party system it is a national necessity that both parties be able to function at minimal levels at the very least. The lack of ability to cohere around a leader is made all the worse given a looming budget crisis and two international crises that require US attention, one of which emerged whilst party leadership (I use the term advisedly) continued to demonstrate an inability to count to 217.

I am disturbed not only by the general inability of the Republican Party to perform the minimal task of party existence, but on the macro level I also know that the likely democratic feedback needed to correct this behavior is going to be less efficacious than is we, as a country, need.

By this I mean, that if we had representative and competitive elections in the US, the chance that the GOP, especially some of its more problematic members would be exposed to having, at the very least, to explain themselves to the public as to why they can’t elect a leader (I keep harping on this because it is so very basic–we aren’t talking about fixing the tax code, addressing spending bills, or anything complicated here).

The "two-party system" is rigid in part because the incumbent parties like it: try getting on the ballot as a Libertarian or Free Soiler or even as a Know-Nothing.  He's right, though, that a party with a governing majority ought be able to agree on a leader (in parliamentary republics, when the governing coalition can't do that, it's time for elections) but there are at least four political parties stuffed into that rigid system, and the Democrats can keep up a fig leaf of "party unity" as the House minority and let the Republicans look silly.  Let some centrist Republican approach a centrist Democrat and propose making one of those centrists, from either party, the speaker, and watch the fireworks!

HAMAS IS TO GAZA AS BLACK LIVES MATTER IS TO MINNEAPOLIS.

That is, in the sense that both organizations would rather have constituents in a parlous state so as to whip up outrage than have those constituents becoming prosperous.

If the residents of Gaza, after the War, had developed those beaches and become a tourist destination, the internationalist left and the Islamists would not have had a population kept in a parlous state, the better to mau-mau Israel or neoliberalism or American hegemony or whatever with.  Chicago might be facing a similar fate.  That is, unless that Democrat base in Chicago tires of the ongoing crime and the importation of even more people to be kept in a parlous condition.

Northern Star reporter Devin Oommen recently interviewed three social scientists who might, inadvertently, have confirmed the maxim that the world offers challenges, and the university responds with departments.

Ches Thurber, an associate professor of political science at NIU, said Hamas’ attack was a strategy to bring attention back to Palestine and to take advantage of  disruption within Israeli courts.

“The ongoing discussions about a potential peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel along the lines of what the UAE (United Arab Emirates), Bahrain and Israel had signed a few years ago. Hamas probably wanted to disrupt that kind of peace deal, try to make it not happen, as well as try to exploit these fissures within domestic Israeli politics,” Thurber said.

Thurber said Hamas’ attack was a response to the state of peace negotiations.

“But that being said, I see those as kind of small symbols of a bigger phenomenon, which is that the Palestinian issue had not been at the forefront of political leaders’ attention regionally or globally in a number of years,” Thurber said. “There’s been no progress on peace negotiations.”

Thurber said an outcome that maintained the status quo challenged Hamas’s existence.

“I think the Israeli government believed that they could contain violence from Hamas, not negotiate with the Palestinians,” Thurber said. “Either Hamas or the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), which is the group that is the leader in the West Bank region, and we’re just going to, over time, continue to maintain a blockade of Gaza, continue to occupy the West Bank and gradually increase the territory that it was directly controlling through the expansion of settlements. This represented an existential threat to Hamas.”

That's an intriguing Complex Proposition.  I'm not sure how to break it down.  That "disruption" within Israel's courts might have led to a fracture in the country's government  or created a theocratic state in a way that could have driven a wedge between Israel's government and the secular-progressive Jews in the United States.  That "disruption" of the peace talks between Iran's longtime enemy in Saudi Arabia and Iran's enemy of convenience in Israel is a distinct motive.  Hamas tacticians, if there are any, might have hoped for one, or both, of those outcomes.  They got neither. "Thurber said the response from Israel’s government indicates they are no longer considering diplomacy."  There's a War Emergency government in Israel, and the seculars and the true believers agree that Hamas must be extirpated.  "Normal people are being brought together," indeed.  That center-left coalition forming to protect the courts can wait for now.

WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE.

Twitchy's Sam J. has a little fun with Hillary Clinton's latest "I'm Still Relevant" tour appearance.  "Hillary Clinton Gets Into Unhinged Screaming Match With 'Heckler' Blasting Her for Warmongering."

The setting is not the same as it was at a Wellesley commencement all those years ago.

Hillary Clinton SNAPS into unhinged screaming match with heckler exposing ruling class warmongering:

"Sit down! We've heard your opinion!"

pic.twitter.com/52Z8d1Uq0O

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 24, 2023

Her interlocutor doesn't come off as, either in comportment or in line of questioning, what you'd associate with the mega-ultra-MAGA sort of fascist Dementia Joe yells about.  How the world turns: the advocate of more ecstatic modes of expression, or whatever Elphaba sounded off about at that long ago commencement, getting lit up by a contemporary campus protester.  Right now, the disunity among the Republicans in the House is concealing the fault lines between the corporatist and communist wings of the Democrats' coalition, and bundling military spending for Ukraine and Israel isn't going to be assuaged by spending a little more on wind farms.

Anger management has never been one of Crooked's strengths.  "Ticking timebomb of nutball ... "

LET'S GO FOR A TRAIN RIDE.

Rick Harnish of the High Speed Rail Alliance files a report from Florida.  "Brightline is raising the bar for what many Americans expect from train service. For that reason, it’s a high-impact, long overdue, and very welcome addition to our transportation mix." There's floor level boarding, it's always fun to overtake traffic, especially traffic at highway speeds, and leaving the driving to Brightline makes for an enjoyable outing to a footie match in Miami.

HARVARD YARD IS THE WUHAN WET MARKET.

Former "Politically Incorrect" host Bill Maher, whose politics are probably best understood as left-libertarian, went off recently on the elite institutions of higher education.

Showing images of Pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel demonstrations at Harvard University, the comedian continued, “And if you absolutely have to go, don’t go to an elite college, because as recent events have shown, it just makes you stupid.”

Maher stated that the tragedy in Israel revealed “how higher education has become indoctrination into a stew of bad ideas, among them the simplistic notion that the world is a binary place where everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed, in the case of Israel, oppressors being babies and bubbes.”

The host was referring to Palestinian supporters on these campuses that have insisted that the Hamas attack was Israel’s fault for oppressing Palestinians.

Universities: where you must reject the gender binary but swear fealty to the oppression binary?  That's not how Thom Hartmann sees it.  "The three core pillars that hold up democratic republics are a vibrant and free press, trustworthy electoral systems, and academic independence. Which is why Republicans have been trying to destroy all three."  Oh, I don't know: you don't have to be a hard-core fan of Pajamas Media to suspect that the legacy media are anything but vibrant and free; you don't have to be a Chicago voter to have reservations about inter alia motor voter registrations and ballots mailed to all registered voters; and you don't have to be a monarchist in the history department to have qualms about academic independence.

THE RETURN OF THE THEATER ORGAN.

Milwaukee's Oriental Theatre, better known for its midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, will soon have a working theater organ.

Milwaukee Film‘s $10 million campaign to restore the Oriental Theatre is reaching a key point.

On Nov. 8, the organization will unveil a new Wurlitzer organ. Although “new” isn’t quite accurate. The organ was actually constructed in 1925.

A red carpet fundraiser, “Coming Home Again: A 1925 Wurlitzer Pipe Organ’s Grand Debut”, will mark the occasion. Silent comedy Safety Last, a 1923 film starring Harold Lloyd, will be accompanied by a live score played by acclaimed organist Ron Rhode.  Tickets to the event start at $200.

“When considering how best to celebrate and unveil the newly installed Wurlitzer at the Oriental Theatre we wanted to honor the overlapping histories of cinema and the theatre organ,” said organization artistic director Cara Ogburn in a statement. “So Lloyd’s classic, always a crowd-pleaser and celebrating a major anniversary this year, was an easy, natural and perhaps obvious choice. We are thrilled to be working with the Harold Lloyd Estate to present this film in such a reverent way with Ron Rhode’s masterful performance of the Wurlitzer as exactly the right coda to conclude this phase of our historic restoration work at the Oriental Theatre!”

I wonder whether that Wurlitzer was built in DeKalb, and whether Safety Last was ever a nickel feature at the Oriental back in the day.  So it goes, artistic preservation doesn't come cheap, and at least you get to contribute to the restoration of the theater, rather than buying rubber chicken and hoping the political candidate will respect you after the election.

IS IT TOO LATE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION TO REDEEM ITSELF?

In City Journal, Jacob Howland is unsparing.  "Student and faculty reactions to Hamas’s atrocities demonstrate once and for all the fraud of elite higher education. We must reform our universities—or create new ones."  In three paragraphs, he summarizes arguments that have given Cold Spring Shops structure for over twenty years.

Higher education exists to preserve, transmit, and extend knowledge, including the sound judgment and knowledge of the whole we call wisdom. Universities stand at the threshold between past and future, self and society, the eternal verities above and the flow of time below. Their job is to join what would otherwise fall apart: to remember the past, fructify the present, and incubate the future. At their best, they are modern temples of Janus, the two-faced Roman god who looks backward and forward, inward and outward—a symbol of wakeful, vigilant minds that receive tradition with gratitude, seek knowledge with grace, and face challenges with grit.

But in the United States, universities have never been worse than they are today. Barbarians have invaded the temples of teaching and learning, ransacked the sanctuaries, and defiled the sacred scrolls. For decades, students have been steeped in a postmodern intellectual culture of repudiation, relativism, and reductivism. They’ve been taught to “deconstruct” the great books and noble ideals of the West; to regard morality, and even the criteria of scientific truth, as social constructions; and to understand politics and society as “discourses of power” illuminated by the doctrines of “critical theory” and “intersectionality.” Bereft of precious civilizational compasses and maps, they have learned to regard fundamental social relationships as zero-sum games of domination and servitude.

The events of recent weeks have brought home an ugly truth: far from equipping students to preserve and extend civilization, American universities—especially elite ones—have been teaching them how to destroy it. They’ve reminded a forgetful public that pernicious academic theories can have appalling consequences.

When Inside Higher Ed runs a column, in this instance by Christopher Snyder, that looks at a different list of distressing news (at City Journal, it's the junkthink, at Inside Higher Ed the budget cutting and program closures) and offers a similar meditation on the role of the university, perhaps we're at one of those moments when a lot can happen in a short time.

1. That a university (universitas) exists for the pursuit of truth, the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, and the instruction of students as future teachers, scholars, career professionals, and citizens of this republic.
2. That a university should maintain at least one college (collegium) that is dedicated to the liberal arts (artes liberales), of which the essential components are full and robust programs in philosophy and religion/theology, history, English language and literatures, classical and modern languages, mathematics, the natural and physical sciences, the social sciences, and the creative arts (including art, drama, and music).
3. That neither a university nor a college should claim to be founded in the liberal arts, nor have liberal arts in its mission statement, unless it upholds these principles.
4. That a liberal arts college and curriculum should strive to be diverse and inclusive, including by enrolling students and employing faculty from underrepresented groups, and also to foster intellectual diversity, to not be governed by ideology but to be an open, respectful arena for exchanging ideas.
5. That a liberal arts college is primarily an intellectual community of scholars—faculty and students—and that the curriculum belongs solely to the faculty, who have training and expertise in these disciplines and who will seek advice from students, staff, and administrators if and when they make any curricular changes.
6. That if a liberal arts college is to be truly free, it must be free from outside political, ideological, and managerial pressures.
7. That it is expected that such a college will develop individual and distinctive characteristics, and therefore should not be formed or evaluated by government or accreditation bodies.

That presupposes sufficient intellectual diversity among the proper stewards of the curriculum, a request that presupposes the faculty not abdicate their roles to the professional protest communities and the failed scholars of Student Affairs.  There is still a lot of work to be done to reclaim the academy.  That will be material for posts in the next few days.  I don't care who gets the credit, as long as it gets done.

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION BECOMES AN ANTITRUST VIOLATION?

Reason's Peter Suderman goes to Taylor Swift's movie and muses on predatory exercises of market power.  "The pop singer's new concert film inadvertently makes the case for big businesses with sweeping market power."  She's bundling the concert experience, if without the performer on stage, with the revenue from selling videos.

For nearly three hours, Swift performed songs from albums spanning her entire career, which now runs the better part of two decades. And the roughly 70,000 fans in the stadium—some equally sparkly—ate it up, screaming and crying and OMGing and tearfully, joyfully singing along.

In fact, the movie probably represents the efforts of more like 200,000 fans, since it was shot over three nights in August. Swift's tour stop in Los Angeles was even longer, playing for six nights; tickets reportedly cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars and required a Taylor Swift–like level of focus and effort to obtain. Tickets to the movie, which was released following a surprise announcement this summer, were not quite as arduous to acquire, but on opening weekend, screen after screen sold out, instantly making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time.

All of this, and not a legacy movie studio or social media company involved.

AFTER FURTHER REVIEW.

The undefeated women's volleyball teams of Wisconsin and Nebraska met in Lincoln for the mid-season lead in the conference.  The match was inside, with decent attendance setting a local record of 9198 fans.  It came down to five sets.  "It took a reversal of a point at the end as a kill by Sarah Franklin was nullified by a net violation call on video review."  That's right, it's either going to extra serves tied at fourteen, or it's over.  "If there was a quibble, it’s that such a historic match ended on a replay. But those quibbles will not come from the Nebraska side."  No, their game recap, which is instructive reading, notes, "The Huskers (19-0, 10-0 Big Ten) finally beat the Badgers (18-1, 9-1 Big Ten) for the first time since 2017, snapping a streak of 10 straight losses. Nebraska also beat the No. 1-ranked team for the first time since 2017. "

You can either grouse about replay review (I'm not a fan) or take an education from it.  If you're Nebraska, you're looking at the second set from the perspective of "could we have taken control of the match?"  If you're Wisconsin, you're looking at the fourth set from the perspective of "could we have put them away then?"  Come the fifth set, they're probably looking at net violations.  Those and service errors can be a consequence of playing aggressively, avoiding them by not playing aggressively probably doesn't win.

There will be a conference rematch in Madison around Thanksgiving.

DECK YOUR HALLS.

A few days ago, I made a run to the local Menard's.  Two weeks ahead of Hallowe'en, the modest pumpkin I found to let the local kiddies know there would be treats even at a house not blinged out was marked down for clearance, not that I'm complaining, and what remained of the decorations for that season were on a shelf or two.  There were a few Thanksgiving decorations on offer, although that area of the store was filled with the Christmas stuff.  The Festive Season music, not yet.

In the toy department were the Lionel trains.  It's now possible to get a "Santa Fe starter set" complete with the latest iteration of the Warbonnet F3, along with a caboose, a circle of track, and a remote control power supply, all for $250.  That link takes you to Classic Toy Trains staffers channelling their younger selves at Christmas, tearing the wrapping off the box and setting it up.

It's also possible to get the Warbonnet F3 with Santa Fe passenger cars, the way God and the old Lionel Corporation intended.

Don't look for either of those trains in some future seasonal video here.  There are still plenty of vintage trains, some of them still running after almost a hundred years, and plenty of background music to provide more than enough variety.  That $250 might buy useful O Scale materials.  Maybe a new "Watch this Space" is coming.

FRIDAY SHORT TAKES.

The last two weeks have provided clarity, haven't they?  "When you are Jewish, you are always aware that there is a large population in the world that wants to kill you."  It is time to see off the boutique multiculturalism.  "How do you destroy a culture? For starters, you discredit it."  In Gaza, or at Georgetown, This Means You. "It’s time the West believes in its own civilizational exceptionalism."  And superior firepower.  "Who needs a 30-round magazine?"  Make hummus out of Hamas.

Academia delenda est.  "Cowardly administrators give in to the braying left. Every time."  Has the woke bill finally come due?  "It’s time — past time — to change this increasingly toxic industry." As Milt Rosenberg had it, "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!"

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

EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE.

Inside Higher Ed contributor Michael Hemesath, an economist, suggests that university presidents stop issuing statements on Matters of Public Import.

Despite a less public role and often no formal requirement for external engagement, educational institutions and their leaders often feel called to take political positions or engage in public policy debates.

While there are natural ways to engage in classrooms and on campus, a common method of engagement for administrators is to make public statements on behalf of their institutions. Usually, such statements are put out under the signature of the president or chancellor, who is assumed to have the right and responsibility to speak for the institution.

Too often, those statements make the professional protest communities within the university comfortable with their prejudices.

This resulting institutional statements are usually unsurprising and unremarked upon beyond campus borders. Recent examples include statements on policing and systemic racism in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, public comments about women’s rights following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and, most recently, support for diversity and affirmative action in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Students for Fair Admissions case.

He's currently at Carleton, after a hitch at St. John's, and I have to wonder whether saying things to soothe the professional protest communities did the Twin Cities or any other major metropolitan area any good.

IT'S FORBIDDEN TO SPEAK OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM.

Last night, Dementia Joe made a case for spending money on international relief that Harry Truman or Richard Nixon would have grasped.  He even said "indispensable nation" and "arsenal of democracy."

You knew that the communist wing of his coalition would have problems.

It's not that they understand how crazy it is for the same Dementia Joe who cracked wise about abusing freedom and repeatedly scolded voters and politicians who disagreed with him.  Rather, it's "nice coalition you have, old man, be a shame if something happened to it."

They did.  "Biden Demands Military Aid Boost for Israel Amid Growing Revolt Inside State Department."

THE HOMECOMING FOOTIE MATCH.

That makes sense for small colleges without the traditional elevens.

So, too, it becomes for small town high schools.

It’s homecoming at Big Foot High School in Walworth County, and the stands are packed with parents and students gathered to watch their team crush Monroe High School.

The school’s cheerleaders and marching band are belting out familiar chants and melodies before the game. During half-time, people rush to grab concessions and the homecoming court is announced.

It’s mostly business as usual.

Except this year, the Friday night lights are shining down on the boys' varsity soccer team.

In Wisconsin, there are fewer kids going out for football. That's been developing for several years.  It could be an upscale phenomenon, and it's not limited to Wisconsin.

Big Foot is not alone. Across Wisconsin, high school football teams have had to forfeit games this season. Participation in the sport has declined for the last decade – and this year, some schools are finding they no longer have enough back-up players to finish out their season.

Wisconsin saw a nearly 25 percent decrease in participation in 11-player football from 2009 to 2019, which is the most recent data available from the National Federation of State High School Associations. The state has seen the biggest decline in high school football participation in the country, according to the association.

In the 2008-09 season, 433 Wisconsin high schools had 11-player football teams with 30,823 total players. During the 2018-19 season, 388 schools had football teams with 23,154 total players.

In the fall of 2013, some Wisconsin schools started fielding eight-player football teams.

Especially for smaller schools in rural areas, the smaller teams can be a way to maintain the sport even as fewer kids want to participate. In the 2013-14 school year, 379 players were part of eight-player football teams. In 2018-19, that was up to 646, according to the national association. But the increase in the scaled-down version of the sport exists in large part because participation in 11-player football has declined.

Those eight player squads are becoming more common in Illinois, and some of those squads are joint efforts of more than one high school.  The article also notes that successful programs tend to have more kids trying out, and that participation in Texas high school football continues to be high.  Self selection, maybe, whether it's strivers exercising school choice, or some sort of political sorting going on?

Texas, interestingly, offered inclusive football in the form of seven player teams in small towns years ago.  These days, the development officers could probably hire out at starveling colleges.

DEVOLUTION MIGHT BE THE BEST WAY TO HEAD OFF CIVIL WAR.

The signs and portents were present five years ago.

When voices left, libertarian, and right raise similar objections to an established order, might that order be in trouble?

That voices left, libertarian, and right see different ways to replace that order, suggest troubling times might be ahead.

That was before the Ukraine-inspired impeachment inquiry, the corona tyranny, and regional wars simmering if not underway in the bloodlands and in Asia Minor.

FAIR WINDS.

Long time Tribune Corporation meteorologist Tom Skilling announces his retirement, the day before Leap Day next year.

Skilling started his successful career at the unheard-of age of 14 in Aurora, while still in high school. He had a series of radio and TV jobs in Illinois and Wisconsin before coming to WGN-TV in August of 1978. Known for his in-depth and highly detailed weather segments, Tom has elevated the audience’s understanding of not just the weather, but the science behind it.

He was weather reporter for a Madison television station while I was in college, and he implemented some suggestions from flamboyant Wisconsin meteorology professor Frank Sechrist, including time lapse forecasts based on previous videotapes of what the next day was likely to be.

More recently, Second City Cop commended Mr Skilling as a crime fighter.  "We also jokingly named Skilling to assorted superintendents' offices as the single biggest reason crime was ever down. Rain, snow, wind or cold temps, if there was ever a weekend with lower stats, it was all Skilling's doing."

It's still hazardous to issue forecasts more than a day or two out.  I suspect those "extended outlook" slides the weather reporters put up are more out of a sense of obligation than out of any sense of accuracy.

MAYBE PLACE A FEW BETS ON EMERGENCE?

That calls for too much self-discipline.  Transportation for America's Chris Rall sees all sorts of opportunities to order his fellow travelers around.  "With the electric vehicle transition, access to transportation options like transit, walking and biking needs to come first. But—for smart growth and equity—equitable access to charging for apartment dwelling car-owners is an essential part of the picture."

Keep reading, dear reader, it gets better.  You can't have Dementia Joe's beautiful transition in isolation.  There are too many boxes to check first.

Much of the group-think around the transition to electric vehicles comes from the picture in many people’s heads of the suburban built form, where every house is a detached single family home with its own garage where the electric vehicle (EV) sits charging.

Guess what? Not everyone lives in a single family home. If we’re going to integrate the EV transition with smart growth, and make it more equitable, we have to make sure people living in apartments have access to great mobility options. Apartments are good for smart growth, and low income and Black and Brown communities disproportionately rely on them for housing. So, if we want to advance smart growth and equity, there shouldn’t be a mobility penalty for living in apartments. Let’s talk about how to approach this issue.

I'll give him partial credit for seeing the limits of issuing ukases.

For some EV enthusiasts, it’s tempting to focus on EVs first and start with the idea that apartment buildings should be required to have plenty of parking with access to an EV charger in every spot. Not so fast! Parking requirements significantly increase the cost of housing, make it difficult to create walkable environments, and incentivize car ownership and driving which increases emissions.

There is not enough space here to lay out all the problems with off-street parking requirements. Go here, here and here to learn how these outdated and misguided regulations increase housing costs, hamper efforts to create more walkable neighborhoods, generate traffic and more. Suffice to say that the best practice is to eliminate off-street parking requirements, allow the market to determine the number of parking spaces, and focus public standards and investment on biking and walking infrastructure and transit service.

Eliminating off-street parking requirements won’t change the world overnight. In most communities and particularly car-centric ones, developers will build apartments with parking even if they aren’t required to, and many residents will still own cars. Recognizing that it takes some time for communities to become less car-reliant, we need to address charging, the biggest impediment to the EV transition.

How do you reconcile the reality that those batteries require recharging, that dedicated recharging stations make more sense in houses with garages and apartments with off-street parking, and that Our Political Masters, particularly in states run by Democrats, seem bent on forcing as many people as they can to buy those limited-range latter-day Baker Electrics. Which they aren't! "Far too much of [the transition] is built on hope rather than reality."

TODAY IN FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS.

Jalopnik contributor Steve DaSilva has an E-T-T-S moment.  "Even the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe isn't safe from truckification."

Image retrieved from Jalopnik.

I'll cop to consternation about some aspects of truck culture.  Sometimes, though, a toy is simply a toy.

Americans’ tastes in cars keep getting bigger. This sucks — big cars are worse for the world, worse for your wallet, and worse for all the people they mow down. But now, the American obsession with size has come for our most beloved vehicle: The Little Tikes Cozy Coupe.

Don’t worry — the Coupe, and its eight variants, are still around. But they’re joined by a sinister alter, a twisted parallel universe version with malicious intentions: The Cozy Truck. This un-cozy impostor is a pox, a menace, and I need to talk about it. I don’t care that it’s been around for 12 years.

It's not hard to see where he's going. I have seen Smart Cars and similar powered coaster wagons painted in the distinctive red or orange body with yellow roof of the canonical Kiddie Car.

DON'T OVERDO IT.

Here's sufficient heat to last a long cold winter.

Those came off the plants in anticipation of a frost, a few weeks after the salsa was put up.

CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE.

There are plenty of other things to keep me busy, which means some Public Affairs, including abortion, don't get much attention here.  Yes, a few years ago, I responded to a silly columnist whose essentialism extended to "men don't get to vote on abortion policy."  Seriously.

The columnist focused on the deprivation of civil rights she saw in men and women alike having the right to vote.  She did not raise a popular rallying cry from years ago that ran something like "if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."  That slogan was a dig at the Catholic Church, with its strict stance on abortion, and its use of sacraments as teaching points.  It was nyekulturny, dear reader, to point out that the scariest thing many a randy guy could hear was his latest fling saying "I'm three weeks late."  Too male chauvinist.  Until last week.  "I’m not hearing enough from dudes who were saved from an unwanted fatherhood because their partner was able to have an abortion."  That drew the obvious response.  "Stop banging chicks you wouldn't want to have a kid with."

Reality, though, bats last. People have genitals and a drive to use them. Stuff happens. My high school graduating class, for its class cheer, had "Booze is great, sex is fun, we're the class of seventy-one," at least until the school administration objected, and the class cheer became "Censored!"

MORE CROSS-STATE SERVICES.

In Florida, the fast, frequent service between Orlando and Miami is whetting appetites for a cross-state extension to Tampa.

"It’s a big part of our future, right? We love Tampa. Tampa’s the next big market for us. You connect Tampa to the rest of this system and suddenly 75% of the state is within close proximity to a Brightline train. We like that a lot," Brightline CEO Mike Reininger said.

The railroad service, and a planned new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays, might be emerging in common.

"We’re in concert with the mayors in Orange County, the mayor in Orlando, the mayor in Tampa, the Department of Transportation, hard at work to try to figure out the solution that allows us to get a train that’s running from Orlando all the way into downtown Tampa," Reininger said.

"I don't think that it's something that is too far away. I think that it will be coming soon," Hillsborough County commissioner Harry Cohen said. "My understanding is that the next phase of their expansion will be to Tampa to the area close to our Union Station, which is basically between Ybor City and the port district and downtown."

In addition, Cohen told FOX 13 that this week’s announcement about the Tampa Bay Rays’ new stadium will open the door to new possibilities.

"I think that the sense of certainty surrounding the Rays’ stadium situation actually will be helpful, because it will clarify what needs to go on around wherever the Brightline train terminates," Cohen said.

Years ago, Florida East Coast wrote the playbook on retail intermodal trains, and I wonder if anybody is thinking through a business opportunity here.

Proponents of the train argue it will alleviate traffic and that a Tampa-Orlando route would help ease congestion on I-4.

"It's a major freight corridor, so people naturally would like to have alternatives. And this is a really nice alternative," Cohen said.

So far, nobody in Florida is talking about bringing the service to the balance of Florida East Coast, which is to say to Jacksonville. Alas, there's the Chessie Curtain north or west of there precluding extensions to the likes of Savannah or Tallahassee.

That's the latest from Florida.  Dear reader, are you sitting down?  Swallow your coffee before you read on.

IT'S POSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND EMERGENCE. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO MANAGE IT.

Jeffrey Flier, who served a term as dean of Harvard Med, offers sensible observations on the propensity of college presidents to play at public intellectuals.

Disputes arising from geopolitical crises occur in numerous social settings, but colleges are especially vulnerable. First, campuses by their nature are (or should be) spaces for robust debate on contested topics, strongly protected by free-speech norms. Second, students and faculty represent diverse nationalities, religions, cultures, and belief systems. Third, college leaders are expected by many to express opinions on political and social issues on behalf of the institution.

Catch that Divine Passive, "expected by many?" Name three. I can't resist wondering whether a college president weighing in on the latest "crisis" isn't the same phenomenon as the economist offering a forecast: not because he has a clue, but because (1) he can't resist or (2) that's what people at the gathering expect.

LET THE KIDS BE KIDS.

Arnold Kling offers a candidate for a Short Take.  "For teenagers, 18 is the new 14."  Unfortunately, an even-more-extended adolescence leads to maladjusted adults.  "Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults."

There are several phenomena at work. Why are kindergartners being assigned homework?  Then come the helicopter parents.  There's more to that than running the kids to school because the subdivision isn't walkable.  "[E]xperts agree that taking a well-timed step back and letting your child make their [c.q.] own decisions (and yes, mistakes) ultimately helps them [c.q.] become a more confident, successful, and resilient adult later in life."  What would we ever do without experts?

OUR CONTEMPORARY E-T-T-S MOMENT IN THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.

As illustrated in the style of Norman Rockwell.

[T]he basic juxtaposition that runs throughout the series – those jarring ideals – does rather throw into relief some fashionable assumptions of our time. The Forties’ suits with pronoun pins, the applauded looting, classroom violence, transgender sports, the Pride-obsessed educators with big, phallic balloons, etc. There is, I think, a certain… resonance.

The Rockwell aesthetic and period setting invites the viewer to imagine how one’s grandparents or great-grandparents might have reacted if faced with our time’s more modish pieties. A borderless, degenerate, bug-eating dystopia in which childhood is bureaucratically sexualised, and in which sporting unfairness and feral selfishness are met, by our betters, with pretentious approval. It’s very now.

The full series is here. Mr Thompson warns, "Not all of it savoury."

HARVEST SEASON LEAF PEEPING.

Fall weather has been the routine of late.  Despite the overcast, and occasional brisk days, children of all ages are riding the electric cars to pick out pumpkins or buy apples.

That's a Saturday screen shot from the East Troy live camera.  A three car L train protects the 1 pm departure from East Troy.  Yes, it was overcast, and not warm, and yet closer to departure time that platform was full.

One more weekend of Harvest Fest trains is on offer Saturday and Sunday, with hourly departures commencing at 9 am, and the last round trip from East Troy leaving at 3 pm.

Find yourself a preservation railroad and go to it.  There are a variety of Hallowe'en themed events on offer.

REPAINTING THE DECK CHAIRS?

What used to be the University of Wisconsin System is now the Universities of Wisconsin.  The system president, Jay Rothman, explains.

Earlier this week I announced a new name and identity for our constellation of 13 public universities – the Universities of Wisconsin.

The goal is to shift the emphasis from our System to our Universities, which create opportunities for students and improve communities all across the state. It’s an exciting change that I’m confident the people of Wisconsin will embrace with pride.

But the new identity is not the only change we have been making at the Universities of Wisconsin. We’re embarking on change across all of our universities, consistent with our strategic plan, to ensure Wisconsin wins the War for Talent.

We set an ambitious goal to increase the number of graduates our universities produce each year from 37,000 to 41,000. To do that we need to enroll and retain more students at a time when there are fewer high school graduates coupled with a lower percentage of them enrolling in college.

That's the Dilbert moment.  Reality will not change.  There is excess capacity in the west central part of the state, along Highway 29.  The social set at the middling high schools will still weigh the relative merits of Oshkosh or Whitewater for the party scene.  The Madison campus will still attract out of state and overseas students to pay full freight in ways the Milwaukee campus can not.  So many years pass, so little changes.

What matters, though, to the citizens of Wisconsin is that Milwaukee, despite having neither high-visibility football nor royalties from rat poison, now has more Wisconsin residents enrolled than Madison, and Milwaukee's part of the social contract is to make sure that its brainiacs and strivers get the intellectual challenge they might have hoped to get at Madison, had Madison provided a slot for them. The incentive to the former teachers' colleges ought to be to lift their academic profiles as well.

Now that the deck chairs are repainted, we hear from the engine room.

I’ve also asked our universities to address their structural deficits. While this process is resulting in difficult decisions today, it will ensure the universities remain vibrant for decades to come.

At the same time, university leaders are assessing their branch campuses. We know that the status quo isn’t working and that we need creative solutions to address declining enrollment and underutilized facilities.

We’re also addressing change in our approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I have stated my support for the principle of DEI based upon my experience in the private sector overseeing an international law firm. We need to prepare our students for an increasingly multicultural workforce and help all of our students succeed. We also acknowledge that our diversity and inclusion efforts must address, in addition to the needs of historically underrepresented groups, the needs of military veterans, people with disabilities, and first-generation students, while ensuring we protect diversity of thought.

Finally, we continue to promote free speech and civil dialogue on our campuses. Our universities must be places where all students, no matter their background or world view, can express opinions and beliefs. It is this exchange of ideas that creates knowledge so critical to our future here in Wisconsin. I have taken on this work personally, meeting privately with student leaders across our campuses to discuss the importance of civil dialogue.

They can pretend that closing the excess capacity is a "creative solution" or that the Diversity Weenies are able to promote free speech and civil dialogue.  I'm skeptical.

WE ARE ALL UNDEREMPLOYED COMPARED WITH OUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS.

I've made that point a few times.  Let Marian L. Tupy make it in a more graphic way.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. It is 1723, and you are invited to dinner in a bucolic New England countryside, unspoiled by the ravages of the Industrial Revolution. There, you encounter a family of English settlers who left the Old World to start a new life in North America. The father, muscles bulging after a vigorous day of work on the farm, sits at the head of the table, reading from the Bible. His beautiful wife, dressed in rustic finery, is putting finishing touches on a pot of hearty stew. The son, a strapping lad of 17, has just returned from an invigorating horse ride, while the daughter, aged 12, is playing with her dolls. Aside from the antiquated gender roles, what’s there not to like?

As an idealized depiction of pre-industrial life, the setting is easily recognizable to anyone familiar with Romantic writing or films such as Gone with the Wind or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. As a description of reality, however, it is rubbish; balderdash; nonsense and humbug. More likely than not, the father is in agonizing and chronic pain from decades of hard labor. His wife’s lungs, destroyed by years of indoor pollution, make her cough blood. Soon, she will be dead. The daughter, the family being too poor to afford a dowry, will spend her life as a spinster, shunned by her peers. And the son, having recently visited a prostitute, is suffering from a mysterious ailment that will make him blind in five years and kill him before he is 30.

For most of human history, life was very difficult for most people. They lacked basic medicines and died relatively young. They had no painkillers, and people with ailments spent much of their lives in agonizing pain. Entire families lived in bug-infested dwellings that offered neither comfort nor privacy. They worked in the fields from sunrise to sunset, yet hunger and famines were common. Transportation was primitive, and most people never traveled beyond their native villages or nearest towns. Ignorance and illiteracy were rife. The “good old days” were, by and large, very bad for the great majority of humankind. Since then, humanity has made enormous progress—especially over the course of the last two centuries.

Yes, or let me tell you the plot of the shortest time-travel story.  Our intrepid traveller arrives someplace he's really keen to see, and, take your pick, is bitten by a mosquito and dies of yellow fever or malaria, untreatable then, or suffers a minor scrape that turns into an untreatable infection.

Now for the "underemployed" part.

In the mid-18th century, 40 percent of children died before their 15th birthday in Sweden and 50 percent in Bavaria. That was not unusual. The average child mortality among hunter-gatherers was 49 percent. Today, global child mortality is 4 percent. It is 0.3 percent in the Nordic nations and Japan.

Most of the people who survived into adulthood lived on the equivalent of $2 per day—a permanent state of penury that lasted from the start of the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago until the 1800s. Today, the global average is $35—adjusted for inflation. Put differently, the average inhabitant of the world is 18 times better off.

There's a lot more at the link. (Via Cafe Hayek.)