THE CASE FOR CONNECTIVITY. The Transportationist contributes to a Popular Science article on the difficulty of providing high-speed rail service in the United States.

Unlike Europe and Asia, where the dividing line between urban and rural is far more defined, the northeast corridor is the definition of urban sprawl, with populated cities separated by endless suburbs and smaller burgs that all want access to the train. To bullet trains, sprawl is anathema.

“The very high speeds that China is achieving can be obtained only if you space the stations far apart because it takes time to accelerate and decelerate the trains,” says Ken Orski, a career urban transit expert who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations and is now publisher of Innovation NewsBriefs, a widely read transportation policy newsletter. “If you space those stations very closely you lose the technological advantage of high speed.”

Basic physics and human physiology dictate the limits to how fast a train can gather speed or slow down. The intercity distances – from Washington to Baltimore, Baltimore to Wilmington, Wilmington to Philadelphia, Philadelphia Newark and on to NYC and so on – are all short hauls, too abbreviated to take advantage of bullet trains’ top speeds. That’s not even taking into account all the street crossings, which hinder both automobile and train traffic along the route. Take all that into consideration, and 150 miles per hour is probably about as fast as northeast corridor trains can hope for.

Therein lies the aforementioned quandary: In the northeast corridor, there is enough demand to support an investment in next-gen high-speed rail, but bullet trains simply aren’t practical there. And, as Dr. David Levinson, associate professor of transportation engineering at the University of Minnesota, points out, in more wide-open places like the Midwest where true, 200-plus miles per hour high-speed trains have room to run, populations often aren’t dense enough to justify the trains. “The cost side of this is very high,” Levinson says. “And outside of the northeast corridor and a few other places, the benefits are relatively low, so there are limited places where you have enough demand to support passenger service.”

Of course, if Amtrak really wants to roll out China-magnitude trains in the northeast it could simply eliminate stops between major cities. But where trains go and where trains stop is a political issue, and nothing is so effective a destroyer of a potential public good as politics. High-speed rail tends to enjoy hot-button-issue status in the places where it’s an issue at all. In other places, it’s not even on the political radar.

I suggest that the problem is with interconnections between passenger train operators in the United States. In England, one ticket is good for a ride that might involve multiple passenger train operators, and a change of trains from a Voyager or Pendolino or if you're lucky, a pair of 43s with a High Speed Train, to a puddle-jumper, possibly a nodding donkey bouncing over those opposed joints. For instance, you board the fast from London Euston to Liverpool, making two or three intermediate stops, and ride the nodding donkey onward to Blackpool or Wigan Pier. Or you board the fast from London Paddington to Exeter and change to a diesel railcar for Dawlish Warren.

On the Northeast Corridor, the Acela Expresses already pass through Trenton without stopping. Some commuter trains from Philadelphia or New York make limited stops enroute to Trenton. But a passenger boarding New Jersey Transit has to buy a different ticket for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority or for Amtrak, and the trains are not necessarily scheduled to connect.

While the value of a train is that it makes intermediate stops, and the Acela Expresses might exist as upscale hideaways, there are cheaper ways to provide travellers with the benefits of convenient, reliable trains that beat flying and driving times without busting the budget on electrification or new infrastructure that provides only marginal improvements on what we used to do routinely with steam locomotives on jointed rail or diesel locomotives geared for 117 mph.

LOSING THE GOOD OF THE INTELLECT. The late Richard Mitchell used that line, from Inferno, to great effect in an Underground Grammarian essay, "The Curriculum from Hell".

"For we have reached the place of which I spoke,where you will see the miserable people, those who have lost the good of intellect."

Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries were echoing across the starless air,so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.

Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements, accents of anger, words of suffering, and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands,

all went to make a tumult that will whirlforever through that turbid, timeless air, like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.

Professor Mitchell's essay is an early reaction to the introduction of the inclusive curriculum. He suggests that, like other fads, it will pass.

There is quite enough contention, and ambition, in the University to provide a testing and weighing of them all. Some will flare for a space and sputter out, and some will get the Mene, mene right away. Some will fall, only to rise again in another age.

But when the [State] University of [New York at] Albany gives some of its humanities departments the mene, mene, all of a sudden the Received Tradition becomes important. For instance, David Foster at Chicago Boyz finds my link to Gregory Petsko's criticism of Albany's decision, and an instructive bull session ensues.

That's not the only place to find reaction to the humor in the humanities establishment's response. Carol Iannone notes on Phi Beta Cons,

I was surprised that the lament over the shrinkage of support for the humanities and for literature was carried on without reference to the deleterious academic fads that for decades have been undermining them — Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, postcolonialism, postmodernism, all of which denied the possibility of truth and objective knowledge, denigrated the classics as foils for the deployment of power by the privileged white male elite, worked to dismantle the great tradition as racist, sexist, classist, and exclusionary, and promoted inferior works that supposedly represented the formerly excluded victims. The [Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers], formerly the [Association of Literary Scholars and Critics], was founded precisely because the Modern Language Association failed to defend the literary heritage but instead enthusiastically championed these trends. You go out of your way to announce that great literature is not really great and perhaps no greater than your average television show, and not surprisingly interest will decline.

That's longer, and more nuanced than, "Deny incoherent beliefs of any kind: enjoy incoherence" but the sentiments are the same.

At Minding the Campus, John M. Ellis elaborates.

Freshman core courses that gave an overview of the achievements of Western culture were soon abolished almost everywhere, mandatory courses in this nation's history and institutions went too, and literature departments even stopped requiring that Shakespeare be an essential part of the English literature major. Even when formerly mandatory courses are still offered as options, they are often presented through the lens of a jaundiced view of our cultural past that tends to discourage further study.

Predictably, enrollments in departments that substituted adolescent politics for the humanities dropped sharply. My own institution tried something that turned out rather like a controlled experiment to test student response. The radical faculty set up a major in World Literature--one heavily invested in the third world and in victimology--as an alternative to the literature department's conventional majors in English, French, German, etc. They waited expectantly for what they thought would be a rush out of the old and into the new. Alas, enrollments in the new courses were so low (mainly single digits while Shakespeare and Dickens were still drawing hundreds) that the Dean was soon forced to intervene to end this embarrassing fiasco.

There was a time when "save the humanities" would have been an appropriate cry, but that was years ago, when they were being dismantled in one department after another and replaced with the intellectual triviality and sheer boredom of endlessly repetitive Marxist identity politics, as cowardly administrators looked on and did nothing. The poverty of intellectual content was masked by an elaborate jargon, but that only made things worse: the remade programs became the laughing stock of their campuses. But now the day of reckoning has arrived. Enrollments have collapsed, to the point where the smaller departments face extinction. Those enrollments are sinking not because students don't value the humanities, but because they do.

It is important to grasp the fact that the cry we are now hearing ("save the humanities") is not about saving the humanities. It is rather about saving the faculty, who long since destroyed them, from the devastating consequences of their own foolish actions. It asks for a bailout, so that those same people can continue enjoying the fiefdoms they created to replace what once were departments of the humanities. And to respond favorably to that appeal would be folly.

Yet the crisis does need a response--but not the one that is asked for. Now that this day of reckoning has arrived, the appropriate cry should be: "restore the humanities." That rather different slogan would suggest that we should take hold of these failed departments where enrollment has collapsed following abolition of the humanities, and bring them back to health.

All the same, the beat goes on, according to Peter Wood.

Another way is exemplified by the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies. To be sure, C21, as it styles itself, is not in the prediction business. It was founded in the heady days of 1968 as the Center for 20th Century Studies, and aimed at fostering “cross-disciplinary research in the humanities.” It evolved; or perhaps that term is too teleological. It moved along; it encountered trendy new ideas; it coagulated around them. Its Web site explains:

“The Center has long been a leader in the study of modern and contemporary culture, including film, performance, the visual arts, and everyday life, as well as in critical reflection in such areas as feminism, media theory, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, cultural and social theory, and lesbian and gay studies. We do not, however, limit our inquiries to the contemporary world, recognizing that the exploration of the historical, political, and social dimensions of contemporary problems, including race, class, gender, sexuality, and conflict, can only enhance our understanding of them.”

He concludes with the Trenchant Observation of the Day.

"We don’t really need a whole lot more evidence that our current system of higher education has a wobbly future."

Stop being reductive, perhaps you'll learn something.

LARGE IRISH COFFEE, THREE SHOTS OF BUSHMILLS. Phi Beta Cons have posted several observations of the possible ban of alcoholic energy drinks such as Four Loko, an Illinois export perhaps more toxic than Governor Blagojevich, Our President, or "Go Cubs Go". Herewith a product review.

However, to mourn the end of the drink when the ban was announced, I stopped by a neighborhood convenience store and bought one of every flavor they had (just three, and no, I didn’t drink them all at once). That night, with a heavy heart, I drank a can of the lemon flavor and played Call of Duty Classic. That flavor is disgusting, and the smell makes it even worse — it sort of wafts around the room when you open the can, a pungent mix of lemon, energy drink, and alcohol.

Reason's Jacob Sullum is also underwhelmed.

At a poker game last night, I cracked open a couple of Four Loko cans and distributed samples. We all agreed it was one of the vilest drinks we had ever consumed. It was not as syrupy as I expected and in fact had a bitter edge that is characteristic of energy drinks containing caffeine and taurine. The one in the purple can tasted like a grape soda with crushed aspirin mixed into it. Even a test subject who has a fondness for Mike's Hard Lemonade could not abide it (or the cranberry-lemonade variety, which had the same unpleasant aftertaste). In terms of psychoactive effects, it was indistinguishable from wine; I did not notice any extra kick from the caffeine. (One can has about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.) I suspect that the reformulated version of Four Loko, which will not have caffeine, guarana, or taurine, will taste better and will therefore be, if anything, more appealing both to underage drinkers and to the "young adults" that the FDA is so worried about.

Thus, ideas of a product ban will not go away.

Fear not, though. Angus at Kids Prefer Cheese proffers DIY Four Loko.

Or you could simply ask your bartender to make up the order given in the title.

A FEW MORE MINUTES OF FAME. Kishwaukee Hospital gets a percentage of the proceeds a gold recycler earns from a table at a benefit event. That gets the Daily Chronicle curious about the economics of rising gold prices.

The price of gold is driven by the fact that it is an exhaustible resource and by currency fears in the global recession, said Stephen Karlson, an associate professor of economics at Northern Illinois University.

“Because a lot of central banks are effectively printing more money, there are people who are scared their paper money might lose value,” Karlson said. “Gold is an inflation hedge, and a lot of it is driven by fear.”

For people selling their gold, there is little downside to taking advantage of the high prices, Karlson said. But he cautioned there is a chance buyers might be investing in what economists call a speculative bubble.

“All of the money that used to be sloshing around in hedge funds or dot-com stocks or McMansions may be a lot of the money now bidding up the price of gold,” Karlson said. “No economist, no business guru, no fortuneteller knows the day or the hour at which a bubble will pop. But when it ends, a lot of people might end up holding the bag.”

Cold Spring Shops does not endorse investments. Do your own research before investing in gold, or in McMansions.

FASTER THAN A GALLOPING HORSE. Charles Krauthammer pens a column in which "Don't Touch My Junk" takes the place of an eighteenth-century revolutionary motto.

Shannon Love of Chicago Boyz is inspired to stitch the motto onto the Gadsden flag.

Gadsden Flag, Don't Touch My Junk Version
Copyright © 2010 by Shannon Love and hereby placed in the public domain.

There are other efforts on offer. I had a few free moments after class this morning and turned up another version, in a form suitable for my Facebook profile picture. There is also a line of Cafe Press products featuring the flag and the contemporary motto.

Cold Spring Shops wishes to remind readers of another motto, with the Thanksgiving travel rush and National Opt-Out Day approaching.

Avoid the strain, take the train.

IF A TRIP TO MARS, YOU'D EARN, REMEMBER, FRIEND, THERE'S NO RETURN. Burma Shave once posted a string of signs reading FREE, FREE, A TRIP TO MARS, FOR 900, EMPTY JARS. Burma Shave had a taker. Red Owl supermarket manager Arliss French, in Appleton, Wisconsin, took the company up on its offer, and the company's president wired back with the caution that is the title line.

It's a case of the advertising art anticipating life.

In 1952, Wernher von Braun worked out a Mars mission of 963 days that provided sufficient lift capacity to land men on the planet and return them safely to earth. The flotilla he envisioned for the flight to Mars was only slightly smaller than the thousand-plane raids the Army Air Force was staging a few years previously.

Space colonization, however, does not require a round trip.

Establishing a human colony on Mars could go a lot faster if space travelers adopted the same mindset as early American settlers and expected never to return home, two scientists believe.

That's a suggestion. Remember, friend, there's no return is being considered by NASA, but it's not yet policy.

WHY IT MATTERS. College Misery links to An open letter to George M Philip, President of the State University of New York At Albany by Brandeis biologist Gregory A. Petsko. Go. Read. Understand. I'll provide a few highlights.

Just 30 days ago, on October 1st, you announced that the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts were being eliminated. You gave several reasons for your decision, including that 'there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs.' Of course, your decision was also, perhaps chiefly, a cost-cutting measure - in fact, you stated that this decision might not have been necessary had the state legislature passed a bill that would have allowed your university to set its own tuition rates. Finally, you asserted that the humanities were a drain on the institution financially, as opposed to the sciences, which bring in money in the form of grants and contracts.

Let's examine these and your other reasons in detail, because I think if one does, it becomes clear that the facts on which they are based have some important aspects that are not covered in your statement. First, the matter of enrollment. I'm sure that relatively few students take classes in these subjects nowadays, just as you say. There wouldn't have been many in my day, either, if universities hadn't required students to take a distribution of courses in many different parts of the academy: humanities, social sciences, the fine arts, the physical and natural sciences, and to attain minimal proficiency in at least one foreign language. You see, the reason that humanities classes have low enrollment is not because students these days are clamoring for more relevant courses; it's because administrators like you, and spineless faculty, have stopped setting distribution requirements and started allowing students to choose their own academic programs - something I feel is a complete abrogation of the duty of university faculty as teachers and mentors. You could fix the enrollment problem tomorrow by instituting a mandatory core curriculum that included a wide range of courses.

Once upon a time, universities equipped their students with the ability to rebuild their civilization from scratch, should circumstances require it. That's what the first two years were about, with the additional opportunity for students to discover their comparative advantages. General education as something to get out of the way? Corrosive.

He's right to point to faculty complicity. There's more to come here on the death of the humanities, as time permits. And sometimes theater arts and music can be a recruiting point. (Is it fair that Northern Illinois can claim Joan Allen and Dan Castellanato and an orchestra that many more famous universities would covet and a steel band?)

Young people haven't, for the most part, yet attained the wisdom to have that kind of freedom without making poor decisions. In fact, without wisdom, it's hard for most people. That idea is thrashed out better than anywhere else, I think, in Dostoyevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor, which is told in Chapter Five of his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov.

I've got to continue my education and buy this book, based on the plot summary.

That single chapter in a much longer book is one of the great works of modern literature. You would find a lot in it to think about. I'm sure your Russian faculty would love to talk with you about it - if only you had a Russian department, which now, of course, you don't.

Professor Petsko has only begun to talk smack. Just go read it.

It seems to me that the way you went about it couldn't have been more likely to alienate just about everybody on campus. In your position, I would have done everything possible to avoid that. I wouldn't want to end up in the 9th Bolgia (ditch of stone) of the 8th Circle of the Inferno, where the great 14th century Italian poet Dante Alighieri put the sowers of discord. There, as they struggle in that pit for all eternity, a demon continually hacks their limbs apart, just as in life they divided others.

The Inferno is the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy, one of the great works of the human imagination. There's so much to learn from it about human weakness and folly. The faculty in your Italian department would be delighted to introduce you to its many wonders - if only you had an Italian department, which now, of course, you don't.

Macaroni Vermicelli is going to be ringing the changes on Dante again in these pages. But go read the letter.

As for the argument that the humanities don't pay their own way, well, I guess that's true, but it seems to me that there's a fallacy in assuming that a university should be run like a business. I'm not saying it shouldn't be managed prudently, but the notion that every part of it needs to be self-supporting is simply at variance with what a university is all about. You seem to value entrepreneurial programs and practical subjects that might generate intellectual property more than you do 'old-fashioned' courses of study. But universities aren't just about discovering and capitalizing on new knowledge; they are also about preserving knowledge from being lost over time, and that requires a financial investment.

Rebuild from scratch, forsooth. And push the economists or the engineers or the business faculty or some of the nano-scientists too far, or hamstring them with too much process, and they'll set up their own companies.

The best way for people to be prepared for the inevitable shock of change is to be as broadly educated as possible, because today's backwater is often tomorrow's hot field. And interdisciplinary research, which is all the rage these days, is only possible if people aren't too narrowly trained. If none of that convinces you, then I'm willing to let you turn your institution into a place that focuses on the practical, but only if you stop calling it a university and yourself the President of one. You see, the word 'university' derives from the Latin 'universitas', meaning 'the whole'. You can't be a university without having a thriving humanities program. You will need to call SUNY Albany a trade school, or perhaps a vocational college, but not a university. Not anymore.

Please don't call it a trade school unless there are people on the faculty who I could trust with my vertical milling machine.

Just go read it.

ATTEMPTING TO UNDERSTAND THE PERPLEXING. Milwaukee television station WISN goes to the land of train riders.

Hopping on and off a train in Illinois is a very common thing. People at the Glenview, Ill., depot can't understand why Wisconsin isn't on board with high-speed rail.

"Why shouldn't you be taking advantage of the funding that should go to your state," train passenger Susan Jacobs asked.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is pushing to grab those unwanted funds and the train manufacturer.

With Gov.-elect Scott Walker standing by his promise to stop the construction of high-speed rail, Illinois residents feel sympathy and confusion toward their neighboring state to the north.

"It's a bad idea. It's jobs for Wisconsin people, It's a bad idea," train passenger Greg Leeb said.

The City of the Big Shoulders is still a serious Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler. And our Commuter Rail efforts are the envy of the world.

THE PROPER SENTIMENT FOR OUR TIMES. Donald Trump fires an apprentice who violated a fundamental rule.

"I've just been given some very disturbing news that [contestant] Anand [Vasudev] has been text messaging people telling them to bring in money, Anand is that true?" Trump asked.

"That is not true sir. I haven't been texting anyone regarding money, absolutely not," Anand replied.

"Well you know if you did, it's a clear violation of the rules... you're saying you didn't do it?" Trump questioned.

"I have not done that," Anand insisted.

Big mistake.

"You want me to read you a text message?" Trump fired back.

"Go right ahead, Mr. Trump," Anand said.

"Come to Trump Tower from 10AM-1PM. Bring at least $50. Pretend like you don't know me. Need you to buy a pedicab from me or one of my teammates. I'm project manager so my ass is on the line. I'm getting close to the top -- I won't have my phone with me, so just come by and pretend like we don't know each other," Trump read aloud to the seven remaining contestants.

"Pretty bad right?"

"That was bad, Mr. Trump," Anand replied.

Why did you deny it? You lied to me," Trump noted.

"I want to be at the top, I want to win, and nobody came... it was wrong and it was inappropriate but being a project manager, you want to win," Anand told Trump.

It's more than his ass on the line now.

After Anand and Trump both agreed on the fact that Anand crossed the line, Trump declared Anand fired.

"This is why the country's gotten into such trouble. This is the kind of thinking that we've been witnessing on Wall Street for the last five years -- Anand, you're fired," Trump said.

I'm informed that there was no taxi waiting for him at the door, as is usually the case with the fired contestants.

A BUSY DAY FOR AMTRAK, AND FOR THE PIZZERIA. Amtrak's busiest day is the Sunday after Thanksgiving (a lot of its traffic is collegians, and they start melting away the previous Thursday, but they all want to return on Sunday).

Thanksgiving Eve is the busiest day for the pizzeria, as a lot of families, contemplating the work involved in getting the traditional turkey together, go for the traditional comfort food, and let somebody else clean the kitchen.

It's also a busy day for Amtrak, so if you want to avoid the airport congestion, which will be aggravated by National Opt Out Day, get your reservations in.

Image courtesy Atlantic Monthly.

More commentary, and the source.

MAKING POLITICAL HAY. Wisconsin governor-elect Scott Walker's decision to cancel the extension of Hiawatha service to Madison (or not) gives the opposition a chance to exploit the cross-Cheddar Curtain rivalry.

Image courtesy The Political Environment.

Or perhaps the governor-elect wants the money for road projects in anticipation of the national government's latest hero project.

OVERREACH. Victor Davis Hanson writes finis to Our President's ambitions, and to the delusions of his enablers on the left.

It all started in January 2009, when a giddy Barack Obama failed to appreciate how he got elected. He concluded that his victory was proof of a radical shift to the left on the part of the American electorate. In fact, it was a combination of the novelty of the first serious African-American presidential candidate, a so-so McCain effort, the traumatic financial meltdown of Sept. 15, 2008, unhappiness with the Bush administration’s Iraq war, fawning media, an orphaned presidential election with no incumbent running, and Obama’s centrist campaigning that explained the near impossible election of a northern liberal, when kindred sorts such as Dukakis, Kerry, McGovern, and Mondale had all failed. The country clearly wanted a corrective to the big spending and borrowing of the Bush administration — and soon discovered that, instead, it was going to get a far larger second serving of it.

From the outset, European expansive government was the model for this administration. But a statist antidote to the financial crisis was a complete misreading of ongoing events at home and abroad. The Wall Street meltdown was a result of a two-decade-long state intervention in the mortgage industry. Big government had guaranteed lower-income Americans that they could buy homes they could not afford, while those who built, sold, or financed subsidized houses were aided and abetted by the con — assured of exorbitant government-backed profits with the ethical cover of helping the poor achieve home ownership.

In reaction, quite fabulously the Obama administration explained this government-backed Ponzi scheme in terms of popular distrust of private enterprise and a need for a radical expansion of government as a share of GDP — or, in the now-infamous quip of Rahm Emanuel, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” More ironic still, the implosion of much of southern Europe and the belt-tightening and cost-cutting of the European Union’s strongest economies offered ongoing proof that the redistributive state was unsustainable, at the precise moment we Johnny-come-lately Americans were rushing to embrace just that failed paradigm. The almost stealthy departure from the Obama administration of academics who so prominently guided our economic policy until recently — Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers — suggests that they wished to get out of fantasy town ahead of the reasoning posse that was bound to follow.

The same flight of logic explains the Obamians’ weird post-election political triumphalism about the first two years of unpopular legislation promoted or passed by the administration. The takeover of health care, passage in the House of cap-and-trade, bailouts, expansions of entitlements, and huge deficits should — given their low poll ratings — have been something to hide rather than parade. Yet Obama and his loyalists point to these very accomplishments as proof that a now unpopular administration should be proud of its unpopular record.

Of course, the American people did not see it that way, in the greatest outpouring of anger in any midterm election of the last 72 years. Apparently the voters liked very little of what Obama had envisioned for them — and felt that it didn’t take a political genius to increase government spending with borrowed money. Only a fabulist would keep bragging of a political legacy that led to political catastrophe. Two years of stasis and gridlock would have done better for the Democrats at the polls.

There also emerged an equally unhinged postmortem analysis that cited almost every cause of Democratic defeat — except the unpopular record of 2009–10 and the weak economy: The most visible and exposed president in American history had not “gotten the message out.” The inordinate loss of blue-dog Democrats in key swing congressional districts that are barometers of national opinion “proves” that the defeated Democratic incumbents there were not liberal enough. The referendum was supposedly a warning to both parties in general and Washington in particular — and therefore the loss of 60 or more Democratic seats in the House is analogous to the wave of public frustration that Obama rode into office in 2008. Again, the reasoning class clings to fantasy instead of the “facts and science and argument” that explain why all the House gains of 2006 and 2008 were wiped out at one stroke. Twenty-one months of Barack Obama’s vision proved more deleterious to Democrats than what six years of Iraq and the mortgage meltdown did to Republicans.

The list of mythologies could be expanded: A public furious over open borders and looming amnesty was supposedly frustrated about the lack of “comprehensive immigration reform,” the new euphemism for amnesty. The failure to act on unpopular promises like closing Guantanamo, trying KSM in a civilian court, and ending “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” apparently disappointed voters. Calling fellow Americans “enemies” and telling Republicans to sit in the back seat were symptomatic of Obama’s inability to rev up the base in partisan style.

Easier to blame the outcome of the election on too much business money buying campaign commercials.

THE CASE FOR LIMITING GOVERNMENT? Our President is out of his depth, which may or may not have prompted Newsweek to contemplate the implications of "The presidency has grown, and grown and grown, into the most powerful, most impossible job in the world." Does it really come as a surprise when, after years and years of Smart People telling us that Enacting The Right Policies and Putting Technocrats In The White House will Make Our Lives Better, and after years and years of Talking Heads describing every inconvenience as the next crisis, and framing the ending of the inconvenience as something requiring Action By The Government (I think it got out of hand about the time the Talking Heads all used the Capitol as part of their logo or their backscene) that eventually Reality would be waiting on a dark alley somewhere off of K street with a leaded sock?

Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st-century presidency? Obama has looked to many models of leadership, including FDR and Abraham Lincoln, two transformative presidents who governed during times of upheaval. But what’s lost in those historical comparisons is that both men ran slim bureaucracies rooted in relative simplicity. Neither had secretaries of education, transportation, health and human services, veterans’ affairs, energy, or homeland security, nor czars for pollution or drug abuse, nor televisions in the West Wing constantly tuned to yammering pundits. They had bigger issues to grapple with, but far less managing to do. “Lincoln had time to think,” says Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University. “That kind of downtime just doesn’t exist anymore.”

Among a handful of presidential historians NEWSWEEK contacted for this story, there was a general consensus that the modern presidency may have become too bloated. “The growth is exponential in these last 50 years, especially the number of things that are expected of the president,” says presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, who had dinner with Obama and a handful of other historians last summer. Obama aides speaking on background say that the president’s inner circle can become stretched by the constant number of things labeled “crises” that land on his desk—many of which, like the mistaken firing of Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod in Georgia or the intricacies of the oil cleanup in the gulf, could easily be handled by lower-level staff. “Some days around here, it can almost be hard to breathe,” says one White House official who didn’t want to go on the record portraying his boss as overwhelmed. Another senior adviser says that sometimes the only way to bring the president important news is to stake out his office and “walk and talk” through the hall.

The growth of the presidency has been a sort of Catch-22. Most presidents after Roosevelt, at least until the Vietnam era, got by with only a few dozen advisers. Ted Sorensen, the Kennedy speechwriter who died last month, was actually hired as a domestic-policy counselor, one of only a handful (he wrote speeches in his spare time). Today there are more than 35 staffers devoted to domestic policy, plus more who parachute in on particular issues, like health care or energy. Yet as the president’s responsibilities have grown, the instinct has been to hire more people to help manage the work, including the flow of information. “That’s wrong; the more people you have in the White House, the more problems are sucked into it,” says James Pfiffner, a George Mason University professor of public policy whose 2007 book, The Modern Presidency, examined the enormous growth of the office. Other historians point to the changing role of cabinet secretaries. While Obama has more department leaders than ever before—15, compared with Gerald Ford’s 11 and Lincoln’s 7—many of them have less power and influence, which has required minor decisions about trade, energy, and economic strategy to be handled by White House staffers.

Enumerated and limited powers, winning by default? Is the house organ of the Liberal Establishment not disagreeing with periodic attempts by Republicans and libertarians to abolish a few cabinet departments?

Political scientist Thomas Cronin once credited the period between World War II and Watergate as the “swelling of the presidency.” It was during the Eisenhower administration that historians first asked if the president simply had too many demands. But those were far less cluttered times. “We had a lot to do, and many people were asking questions, but we were never overwhelmed,” says Harry McPherson, who served as counsel, then special counsel, to Lyndon Johnson. Such memories sound quaint to current White House staffers. “There is never a day we come in and there are only a few things we need to do,” says Bill Burton, Obama’s deputy press secretary.

And John Kennedy ran for office pledging to get the country moving again, and there was a circle of enlightened opinion that maintained the Eisenhower presidency was a do-nothing presidency.

Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

JUNK SOCIAL SCIENCE IS PERMISSIBLE IN SERVICE OF THE RIGHT CAUSES. Some students at Bucknell University parodied affirmative action with a bake sale in April 2009.

Bucknell shut it down because of a minor paperwork discrepancy, then forbade BUCC from ever holding such a bake sale in the future. (Click here for video and here for audio documentation of these points, despite Bucknell's lies to the contrary.)

Another list that was later misplaced. That happens often enough in these days. The story didn't die at Bucknell, or decay over four or five years as cohorts of students graduate, because John Stossel held his own bake sale, and made a television segment (online video at the FIRE post) and wrote a column about it.

More recently, a student group at Wesleyan University held the same kind of bake sale. The faculty response defies parody.

In the wake of an affirmative-action bake sale hosted by the campus conservative club, the Wesleyan University admissions office swore up and down that the school doesn’t have an affirmative-action policy — but now, a large number of the Wesleyan faculty have written in to Wesleyan’s campus paper, the Wesleyan Argus, to defend the practice of affirmative action.

Closer to home, a residence hall organization held a different kind of affirmative action casino.

Project RED (Residents Engaging in Diversity) hosted their fourth annual "Casino Night" in the Stevenson Towers Main Street Food Court, where students could play casino games without risking any actual money.

What made this casino different than most were the decorations. The walls were adorned with posters that read "For every $1 a white man earns, a white woman earns 74 cents."

Similarly, African American men earned 72 cents, black women earned 64 cents, Latino men earned 54 cents and Latina women earned 52 cents to the white man's $1, according to the posters.

There's a long tradition in higher education of alerting students to their privileged circumstances, and there are ways to get that point across while recognizing that race and sex differences in earnings disappear once job tenure, education, and experience are impounded in ceteris paribus.

That's too adult a problem for the reds.

Students' hands were marked with an X when they entered the casino floor, and they were given two $500 chips.

After students changed out their chips for smaller amount, they began to play games. With the "money" students earned, they had the opportunity to win prizes ranging from hooded sweatshirts, a blanket, T-shirts, hats, a basketball, and more items purchased from the University Bookstore.

When students were finished playing, they could cash out their chips in the form of raffle tickets and enter to win prizes.

Besides the educational posters that decorated the walls, there was another surprise in store for those in attendance.

When students lined up to cash in their chips, they were made aware that the Xs they had marked on their hand had a hidden meaning.

Each color X stood for a different race and sex, had been randomly assigned and would determine what kind of exchange rate they would get on their chips. For instance, people marked as white males would receive one raffle ticket per $50 in chips, whereas students marked as a Latina woman got one ticket per $100 in chips.

Not all students were happy after they heard about the unique caveat.

"I felt cheated," [sophomore Khaylin] Snead said.

Before the raffle drawing, [project coordinator Bianca] McGraw spoke about wage discrepancy to the crowd.

"This happens all the time," she said.

McGraw gave examples of coworkers receiving unequal pay for doing equal work, working equal hours and having equal experience. Students roundly agreed this was unfair.

An example is not a proof. A generalization from a small sample is not a trend. How difficult would it be to let the colors signify different levels of educational attainment?

PERSEVERE. The Northern Illinois women's basketball team had a coaching change during the off-season, and the new coach has a first win here, with the team rallying from nine down to beat George Washington by six.

CONCRETENESS OPTIONAL.

Craig Brandon spent some time teaching at New Hampshire's Keene State College and he had such a bad experience with yobbish students, craven administrators, and questionable academic practices that he chucked it all to work on The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It. I've made references to Margaret Soltan's and Peter Sacks's reactions to his thesis. and made time to read it and review it.

Book Review N^o. 28 suggests that Mr Brandon generalizes excessively from his own experiences, and his investigation thus paints with too broad a brush, sometimes unconvincingly.


The flagship universities of the northeastern states are weak to begin with (see inter alia ZooConn and ZooMass) and Keene State is probably a lot less selective than the somewhat less well known University of New Hampshire (which at least has train service) and it might well be the very model of a subprime party school (at least Mr Brandon is aware of one frame for the weaker providers of higher education).

THERE IS NEVER A RIGHT TIME TO BUILD A WRONG PROJECT.

Destination: Freedom elaborates on its approval of New Jersey governor Chris Christie cancelling the New Jersey to Penn Station Under tunnel project with that observation.

TAKE CARE OF THE ACADEMICS AND THE IMAGE WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF.

Yes, Northern Illinois University has been through difficult times, and it's understandable that potential students might be concerned about their safety. The resources devoted to coping with perception tend, however, to focus on the wrong things.

According to a Sept. 2 NIU Today press release, "a Vision 2020 committee, drawn from across the campus, will set ambitious benchmark goals for such areas as graduation and student-retention rates; optimal university enrollment, in both size and composition; and the percentage of incoming students ranking near the top of their high school classes."

Headquarters keeps doing these strategic planning things, each of which sucks up time, none of which seem to have any effect. (When the management fad was downsizing, somebody envisioned a 19,000 student university with an economics faculty of sixteen; enrollments currently exceed 24,000 with an economics faculty of nine, give me one reason to be cooperative.)

Apparently, rather than, oh, hiring more faculty, or closing down the special education functions, the solution lies in a better tagline. The economics faculty is nine; add in political science and history and sociology and maybe you get to 45, yet somewhere on campus there are 45 people with time to serve on a marketing and branding subcommittee. They've already been doing some word-smithing.

RETURNING TO CIVILIAN LIFE. Northern Illinois University earns a Governor's Award for Excellence in Veterans Education.

“These student veterans are outstanding role models who exemplify character, leadership, service to the community and academic success,” [university president John] Peters added, noting that the overall grade point average of NIU student veterans is 10 percent higher than the overall GPA of the student body. “We are proud and honored to have them as part of our community.”

Earlier this year, Military Times EDGE magazine ranked NIU 49th on its list of 101 top colleges for veterans, out of a total 4,000 institutions. G.I. Jobs magazine editors also named NIU for the second consecutive year as being among 1,120 top military friendly schools in the country, out of 8,000 colleges.

At today's Veterans Day observance, conversations included reserve call-ups pending or postponed, and more than a few people contemplating the life of a military spouse.

Thanks, stay safe, hit the books.

GOING TO SEA, THE WAY IT USED TO BE. Fresh water rationed, no showers, spoiled food, top speed three knots. That's not what Carnival Cruise passengers bargained for. Did I mention no functioning toilets?

Peg Fisher of Las Vegas, on her first cruise with husband Tom, described impromptu meals that included cheese-and-beet sandwiches and others filled with something that looked like corned-beef hash.

"If you could see the things they put on sandwiches, seriously, this could be the only cruise ever where people lost weight instead of gaining weight," Peg Fisher said.

Chris Harlen, a dental technician from Buena Park, offered a quick description of his experience after disembarking with his wife and two children, ages 10 and 8.

"It was gross when the toilets weren't working. What can you do?" Harlan said. "There were a lot of people getting smashed off warm beer."

The bar had more than rum, sodomy is optional, and the bo'sun didn't have to break out the lash.