YAKUTIA YAK. There's a lively discussion accompanying Jane Galt's assertion that a (shot at a) degree and (opportunities for) visibility to pro scouts is a poor exchange for the shoe contracts, television exposure, and opportunities to sell your integrity that the coaches, athletic directors and university administrators get. True enough for the "revenue" sports (they generate revenue to be sure, but also expenses) but not true for the rest of the sports, which often go for budgetary or Title IX reasons. Missing from the comments is this relatively simple, hence radical, proposal: jettison the entire structure of intercollegiate competition. Sell the rights to use the arenas, stadiums, and what have you to minor leagues (including using the university name if you wish) but go out of the competition business. Use the resources instead to expand opportunities for intramural competition and individual workouts. Just that quickly, your largest Title IX compliance problems disappear.

A LITTLE PAINT HIDES A LOT OF DIRT. Where Worlds Collide is not impressed with the latest image makeover on the Midland Main Line, and asks, "I notice American railroads don't feel they have to rebrand themselves every couple of years; doesn't Union Pacific still stick to the same colour scheme they used in the 1950s?" The Armour yellow dates at least to the M-10000 streamliner in 1934, and the nose wings are from about the same time. The red lettering is a bit newer. The shield dates to the early 1900s. Many railroads did make over their images in the 1950s and 1960s, usually not successfully. The new large systems have gone back to classic colors of their predecessor companies. The red and silver of Burlington Northern Santa Fe is another streamliner design from the mid-1930s, and the orange and green borrow from the Great Northern's 1947 redesign. Canadian Pacific have brought back the shield and the beaver. Norfolk and Western and Southern both painted their freight diesels black. The South Shore Line has been traction orange and maroon since the 1920s.

THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS. Stolen from one of those marvellous S. Harris cartoons about the academic life, in this case it's a mathematician at the chalkboard getting to Q.E.D. It's also a useful way of thinking about the transformational tapestry our colleagues to the North are contending with. I looked through the model, and attempted to make sense of it, and attempted, and attempted, and ultimately failed. The objective is "maximizing equity." But how? Presumably there is some kind of an ordering of states of the university in which some are more equitable than others (perhaps including different criteria for reaching consensus), and presumably that ordering permits the comparison of states that have differing levels of "access and success," "campus climate and intergroup relations," (that's a tempting straight line but I'll be good) "education and scholarship," and "institutional viability and vitality" (meaning not offending the people who pay the freight? meaning no administrators get fired?) Unfortunately, the report does not spell out how one makes these comparisons, or under what constraints that optimization takes place. Assessing one's situation is always useful, but absent some basis for judging whether desirable improvements are feasible, it is not equivalent to optimization. That's where the miracle occurs, I guess, in the form of transformation via intervention. That, incidentally, sounds like the L from Hell. First you ride transformation (the T train?) for an eternity, then change at Intervention for Eternal Damnation (the D train?)) Whose intervention? Lucifer's? God's? The committee with the funny voting rules? It would be funny except that it's supposed to be a major policy change at an institution of higher learning.

LEARN YOUR STUDENTS' NAMES. They'll notice. They'll even credit you for making the effort, not always successfully, if the class is a large one.

RETHINKING INTRODUCTORY ECONOMICS. From the SCSU Scholars comes news of a proposal to change introductory economics at Harvard. The student comments offered here suggest that the course is a survey of price and income theory (it is a full year course, particulars here) that might well be spiced-up by some puzzles. It's not clear to me that the methods of behavioral economics necessarily give you behavior that is not optimal; a close reading of the article suggests that perhaps there are other constraints that people work under, and that these constraints might get slighted in an introductory economics course, particularly if that course seeks to cover a lot of material once over lightly rather than focusing on a few big things.

TURNED ON BY HEILBRONER? Atlantic Blog offers some recollections about how he learned economics. Well worth reading (most of my regular readers probably already have, thanks for your patience whilst I've been on other tasks.) I cannot claim to have had as many colorful professors as Mr Sjostrom, but perhaps here's why Heilbroner would say macroeconomics is more exciting: Heilbroner is also author of The Worldly Philosophers, a very good introduction to the history of political economy. Where did I read this? In the first economics course I took, a Principles of Macroeconomics course taught by Bob Lampman (and in those days it was a prerequisite to the Principles of Microeconomics, which I took from Claudia Goldin who had just finished her Ph.D.) Bob Lampman's macroeconomics was a bit different from standard fare today in that we spent the first three or four weeks on the history of economic thought: Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Veblen, and Keynes, and we then got some advising-the-powers-that-be recollections to go with the Keynesian Cross. (I'm not sure one could get away with that today, monetary policy was "pushing on a string," rational expectations had just turned up in the Journal of Economic Theory and thus not yet ready for sophomores, and real business cycles hadn't yet been invented.) My next exposure to income theory was in graduate school.

Mr Sjostrom takes a dig at universities that separate principles from intermediate courses. Perhaps there is some merit to his point: I characterized the Intermediate Price Theory (this is at Wisconsin years ago, mind you) as making somewhat more rigorous some of the things we took for granted in Principles of Microeconomics. On the other hand, I got lucky again, drew Morgan Reynolds, who was finishing his Ph.D. and got to read Alchian and Allen and Stigler, both much better sources of puzzles than your standard issue Microeconomics tome of today. All the same, there might be reason for creating an introductory and an intermediate course: get the basics (trading for mutual gain, specialization by comparative advantage, institutions evolve to economize on transaction costs, competitive markets allocate resources efficiently) in an introductory course, and reserve the heavy graphing (isoquants, indifference curves, monopolistic competition if you must) and game theory for the intermediate course.

Oh, and don't forget to push the basics in the more advanced courses. I'm offering an antitrust economics course to an audience primarily of seniors. As a courtesy, I circulated a copy of a previous year's exam. Some people wondered if I wasn't concealing something posing a question that required facility with those four basics recited supra (nope) and more recently they had a similar revelation in the economics of a per se rule (legal resources have opportunity costs.) But what to do about the history of thought that gets crowded out? It's straightforward enough to introduce U.S. v. Addyston Pipe (Judge Taft's appellate ruling: the primary purpose of the agreement is to fix prices, hence it restrains trade) and U.S. v. Trenton Potteries (here the Supreme Court endorses instructions to the jury limiting their work to discovering that an agreement existed.) Then comes U.S. v. Socony-Vacuum. It helps to know something about how severe the Great Depression was and about the attempts to end price-cutting and firing cycles in order to understand why it looks like the same case is coming to the High Bench yet again. Not taught any more, I discovered.

RAILROAD READING. Backtrack editor Michael Blakemore speculates in the March issue (delivery times across the ocean vary) on some additional names for famous locomotive classes, e.g. Bouncy Castle (somebody help me with that reference), Elephant and Castle, Temperance Hall and others in a similar vein. He punts when it comes to the Granges (6840-6879). That would be a problem for a Cornishman, but a trivial exercise to a flatlander, where The National Grange is a political and social organization of and for farmers. Here, though, is a temptation: design a mixed traffic 4-6-0 called Grange Hall.

The substantive parts of the magazine include an article on the Western class diesel-hydraulics, which had some introduction difficulties attributable in part to their being rushed into use. Author Keith Hill's take: "In a perfect world, the existing diesel-hydraulic locomotives, supplemented by a stud of the best remaining steam engines, should have been allowed to plod on delivering the existing timetable until such time as a 'Western' prototype had been tested to destruction. This would have proved its capabilities and highlighted any flaws before work started on a production run." There is no railroad operation from Land's End east to Moscow capable of doing such a proof. Witness what happened to another German derivative of the so-called King of the Diesel Locomotives that attempted to become a mountain engine on the Rio Grande (scroll around, and enjoy that VW microbus, another failure on the mountains.) Three of the 4000 hp units went to Rio Grande in 1961, with high hopes for something light, powerful, and rail-holding. No joy. What was most telling, however, were differences in attitudes toward running trains. The German technicians who accompanied their locomotives to the States were startled to learn that "turning an engine" means refuelling it, checking the oil and water, inspecting a few things, and sending it right back out over the mountains. No eight hours of scheduled maintenance after each trip.

ON THE BILEVEL. Transport Blog has some information about the electric commuter trains in Sydney, Australia. One of the most tempting but difficult things to do with a passenger coach is to fill up otherwise empty space with additional seats. Sydney's railroad attempts to put two levels of seats in a standard-height passenger car. That's not easily done, although the Long Island Rail Road and the Southern Railway (of England) operated such things, the Long Island's for over 20 years. (The new sets of double-deck cars on the Long Island are something different.) Metra Electric, the old Illinois Central electrification, manages to do the job with motorized cars with interiors similar to the gallery coaches in use elsewhere in Chicago, but with a lot more vertical clearance than your Commonwealth or East Coast railroad has to work with. The cars run on 1500 volts D.C., advanced for late-1920s electric traction, as does the connecting South Shore Line, which still offers riders the interurban experiences of flagging down the car with a lighted newspaper and of using the middle of the street for a station stop.

GOTCHA. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has not filed the proper paperwork for his London congestion tax exemption. (Hat tip: Transport Blog.) The newspaper report describes the congestion tax thus: "The charge was introduced last month with the lukewarm acquiescence of the Government, a stance that changed to active support from transport ministers when traffic levels in central London fell 25 per cent in the first week." In fact, Chicago Metropolis 2020 likes the idea.

Booting and towing of cars are common in Chicago, never mind the legalities.

SHIPPING OUT. A Soldier's Tale is a weblog operated by an Army person currently at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, in the driftless area of the state, where the winter is not pleasant at all. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

DELEGATE. And focus on a few big things, according to Craig Gilbert's look at President Bush's management style. There probably is no one best way to manage things, which is a reason for enumerating and limiting the powers of a government, and for chartering corporations and holding them to those goals. There is also something to be said for not spending endless time on what-ifs, my experience with faculty senate meetings suggests that some people are not happy unless there is a contingency plan in midwinter for an instant thaw, and another one in summer for an instant ice age. The essay does raise a good point, though: the President is putting a lot of weight on a specific outcome: continued successful prosecution of the war on international terrorists will lift the uncertainty that is dampening the economy.

RESENTMENT AGAINST ACHIEVEMENT. Entrepreneurs prosper, buy improved homes with running water for their relatives, now enjoy living standards better than their formerly-more-prosperous neighbors. The neighbors are not happy despite the job opportunities the entrepreneurs offer. Potentially intriguing case studies galore here.

THE END OF BADGERBALL. Wisconsin coach Jane Albright, formerly of Northern Illinois University, has coached her final game at Wisconsin. The athletic department would like to see more post-season success (perhaps that is a better goal than using the womens' sports to score diversity points, but I digress.) Ah, but will the new coach get better players at the expense of academic achievement. Successful basketball teams often have low graduation rates and Wisconsin's football program has managed to skirt yet another scandal.

HOW OTHERS SEE US. InstaPundit on the extra credit for writing the President to support the professor's position: "An apology to Bush? How about an apology to the academic community, for making it look like a bunch of politically-driven weasels?" Isn't it more accurate to say "for confirming the perception that politically-driven weasels work there?" Why have a Foundation for Individual Rights in Education if not to defend those rights from the weasels who would eat them?

THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES. Virginia Postrel links to a weblog listing the good and bad points of the several states. The Illinois comments mention some of the usual suspects. They also note that the buffalo roam where the charmed quark plays. The Wisconsin comments are not so well developed yet. A Small Victory, the poster who inspired all this, also brings back a moment of nostalgia. I, too, wondered why the song that aired (yes, radio used to cover the National Anthem before Play Ball) at the beginning of Milwaukee Braves games was called "the national anthem" and it ended "o'er the land of the free and [County Stadium]."

THE RUSH TO SKIP CLASSES. The local student opposition to military action in Iraq has called for a walkout at 1.30 pm on the first day after war starts in Iraq, should war start in Iraq. Apparently some people participated in a protest on Wednesday just past, although the online edition of the university newspaper offers no coverage -- there was a photograph in the print edition of someone holding a sign reading "no war on Quebec"(??!?) Unsullied and Undismayed (citing an older Best of the Web) notes that relatively few students attended the protests. Information not controlled for: weather (Wednesday was dig-out day after a moderate snow in Northern Illinois) and class schedule (we are currently on spring break, perhaps these other locations also are?)

Going Underground - which London Underground tube line are you?

I'm the DISTRICT line!
(via Michael Jennings. Got to check my Tube mouse pad when I get home, see if the District has anything in common with the Ravenswood, the last L line to go the proper way around the Loop.)

EUPHEMISM. The weekday commuter train parade on Metra's Burlington Route begins with the 2.28 departure of train 1235, first stop Downers Grove Main, and the 2.32 departure of local 1237, following 1235 on track 1. Also in the traffic mix is Amtrak's California Zephyr, which leaves at 2.15, adds its express cars and cargo trailers, and usually run on track 2 to Cicero, where it crosses to track 1 ahead of 1237 and behind 1235. On Thursday I was on 1235 returning from a function in Chicago. We left Union Station as scheduled, passed the Zephyr adding its freight cars, took the right turn onto the Burlington and ... stopped. After a few minutes the conductor announced that there were "signal problems" and that we would be moving shortly. Shortly became minutes. The Zephyr finished its air test, pulled past us on the Amtrak lead to the Burlington and ... stopped. The conductor made an announcement that our delay was likely to be prolonged, without further explanation. About then, some light engines off the Union Pacific crossed in front of our train, eastbound from the intermodal yard lead onto the Lumber Street connector. Shortly thereafter, 1235 got its signal and finished its run about 20 minutes late. The train crew then noted, in conversation with some passengers, that the Union Pacific crew had passed a stop-and-stay signal (which prevented the Burlington dispatcher from clearing any signals) and that there had been an investigation. Icy rails, cold temperatures, not the best day to operate trains, train crew perhaps facing suspension. I have to wonder, though ... the traffic reports frequently announce delays to Metra trains attributed to signal troubles. Might instances of trains passing stop-and-stay signals be more frequent than I perceived them to be?

WHY MANDATE SCHOOL ATTENDANCE? Instruction manuals for child-safety seats read at seventh-to-twelfth grade degrees of difficulty. Un-named "literacy experts" suggest that instructions be provided at the fifth-grade level for best results.

TAKE A VOW OF CHASTITY. Asparagirl's send-up of the Lysistrata Project (motto: Women Say Yes to Men Who Say No) has not convinced everybody. As certainly as March brings out the brackets and the office pools, it brings out the International Womens' Day essays about how much more peaceful the world would be if run on "female" principles. Never mind that the findings in John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus have been taken apart by communications theorists in just about as many ways as there are coherent arguments. I attended a particularly lurid demolition of Gray presented by a visiting scholar some years ago, it was a clinic in distinguishing the professional researcher from the amateur. That doesn't stop Leah C. Wells, recently freed from duties as a target designator, from trotting out the old standards: "Two great principles govern all interaction on earth: the male principle of competition and the female principle of cooperation. The judicious balance between these opposing forces functions both as a means of perceiving the world as well as guidance for getting along in it." Huh? Since when did these principles develop gonads? Anyway, "War and peace are often interchangeably substituted for what we identify as the male and female principles." Put another way, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Don't bring that research 'round here. Or if you're going to, have a look at The Odd Girl Out. Perhaps there are sex differences in methods of competition.

Tightly Wound continues the punishment. Go read her work. Perhaps she'll also be set off by Noeleen Heyzer's venture onto similar turf. "If women allocated the world's resources, would they invest in more weapons, or would they choose to invest in the much broader notion of human security -- through development, environmental protection and social services -- which could be provided with a sliver of current military spending?"

Development, environmental protection, and social services all require rules of trading and rights of access, which just might have to be backed up by force.

"Prioritizing human security would see HIV/AIDS as the real threat faced by millions and would provide money for drugs instead of fighter jets."

Here's a classic non-sequitur. Isn't the incidence of AIDS greater in places with relatively little money for drugs or for fighter jets? And what are the implications of referring to HIV infection as a sexually transmitted disease?