POUND A PAN

Northern Illinois graduate Lincoln Douglas is the Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism for Trinidad and Tobago.

Douglas, most recently the minister of state in the Ministry of the People and Social Development, is among several new cabinet appointments Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced Friday, June 22.

“I sought to get the most out of the best fit possible,” Persad-Bissessar said during a live televised address to the nation about the reconfigured government.

Persad-Bissessar likened the changes to “the most iconic symbol of change there could be, an oil drum, hammered out into the only musical instrument in the world developed in the last century: the steelpan.”

“Over the next few years Trinidad and Tobago will undergo a similar transformation borne out of the same ingenuity, creativity and innovativeness which our people have become so famous for. It is time to reclaim that self-belief,” she said.

Look for additional Distinguished Visitors at the steel pan concerts.

WHEN YOU COME FROM TROUBLE.

Sometimes trouble follows you.  Northern Illinois linebacker Devon Butler, who was injured in a retaliatory shooting a year ago, recently was injured again in a fight, and has now been released from the football team.

Butler’s Twitter account, which has since been taken down, showed tweets about hosting a two-day party Friday and Saturday night on the 800 block of Regent Drive.

[Football coach Dave] Doeren made it clear that Butler’s release wasn’t just because of the weekend incident, saying it was “the tip of the iceberg.” Doeren later referenced having previous conversations with Butler regarding the linebacker’s conduct.

Summer practice has begun. We have much to look forward to.

THE LADY PROTESTS TOO MUCH.

Economics is about trade-offs, and one of the central trade-off of life is that between achieving at work and enjoying the life that achievement makes possible.  To some high achievers, there is no trade-off: the professional success is reward itself.  And an individual's willingness to take on additional tasks, including covering for colleagues who have a day-care pickup or a Little League game to attend, might be a signal of responsibility and perhaps of ambition.  To Elinor Burkett, however, that signal is a manifestation of workplace abuse.  Thus we have The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless.  Book Review N^o. 26 suggests we have a polemic, and a not-necessarily well-argued polemic at that.  Ms Burkett has a long history in feminist circles, and parts of her book read more like an attempt to settle scores therein, rather than mount a coherent public policy argument.  Yes, there might be unattached or child-free workers who receive more than their share of burdensome assignments in order that parents can get away on time, and some of those workers might resent it.  More likely, though, such workers are signalling their ambition, or perhaps putting away a reserve in anticipation of being able to support a family, or a retirement hobby, or fund a business in the future.  And yes, policies that protect family leaves in the workplace do little for the working poor or the long-term welfare recipient.  On the other hand, Baby Boon strongly suggests that the women who rise to high corporate rank are less likely to have children, and it notes that career men have long had to neglect their home life in order to rise.  And it ought come as no surprise to any reader with an academic career that a tenured post at a highly-regarded university might be destructive of one's home life.  But nowhere in this book, which is now a teenager, is there any anticipation of what has actually transpired since its publication.  Ambitious people, whether with children or not, are looking to scale back the demands of their work, and we note again that once President Obama ceases to do for the economic recovery what the Brewer long-relievers have been doing for the pennant chase, the separation statistics are not likely to favor the all-work-all-the-time employers.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT.

Our President asks successful entrepreneurs to acknowledge the government's role in building the roads and bridges that bring customers and employees to those businesses.  That may be common practice today, but not always.  Not far from Cold Spring Shops headquarters is the first seedling mile of the Lincoln Highway, an attempt by early twentieth-century entrepreneurs to build a paved highway from coast to coast.  The effort was as much an attempt to lobby for federal funds as it was to improve the roads.  But that lobbying begets both a highway trust fund, and more lobbying, and there's no assurance that the public moneys will necessarily put the roads in the right place, or that customers and employees will be inconvenienced by traffic or by construction to the mutual disadvantage of the entrepreneur and his trading partners.  Go back into history: the internal improvement we know as the land-grant railroads might also have been a misallocation of money that gives critics of corporate welfare from left or right common ground to criticize the policy.

DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION.

It wasn't the hippies.  Their next-elders, too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam, and inheritors of the Pax America, had plenty of opportunity to make mischief without having to face the consequences.  Ed Driscoll has a link-rich indictment of that cohort, which we have, for almost as long as this weblog has been publishing, called to account for a variety of evils including non-judgementalism and enabling the hippies.

THE EMERGENT AND THE ORGANIZED.

In anticipation of the upcoming academic year, here is a Newmark's Door summary of contested territory  between state action and individual action in creating the conditions for individual prosperity.  Richard Posner's 1980 paper on the emergence of law in primitive society (academic readers, log on through your university account) might offer deeper background.  In economics, there's relatively little work on the emergence of government as a provider of goods and services.  We have endowments, and we have exchange economies, and we have production economies.  Presumably, in a two trader, two good world, trust is sufficient?

ADDRESS THE SYMPTOM, NOT THE CAUSE?

Via InstaPundit, a Clayton Cramer essay on the consequences of de-institutionalization.  Some years ago,  a Mike Royko column covered similar ground, suggesting a causal link from releasing people from mental institutions to the growing population of street beggars in Chicago.  Yes, those state hospitals were often unpleasant places, but was the public interest, let alone the interest of those beggars, served, by releasing people onto the streets.  Or leaving them alone to deal with their demons?  "The mainstream media, of course, are using this tragedy in Aurora as an argument for restrictive gun control. But the core problem — the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill — is simply being ignored."

DROUGHT RESISTANT.

Wisconsin garlic farmers are bringing in a harvest.  The article describes a number of garlic varieties, offers recipes, and provides links to sources of exotic garlic.  Apparently the Cold Spring Shops patch includes a hardneck variety, and each year's patch uses seeds from the plant tops.  The buds can also be put in the ground for seed, but the point of the buds is to peel them and use them in cooking.

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY.

Charlie Schroeder, who makes a living covering sports for National Public Radio, discovers the world of military reenactments, and writes about it in Man of War: My Adventures in the World of Historical Reenactment.  He admits to drawing some inspiration for his efforts from Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic, reviewed here.  What he learns about deficiencies in his own historical knowledge provide the material for a brief Book Review N^o. 25.  By the time he's done, he's found reenactors, some performing at public events such as medieval faires or encampments, others engaging in their hobby -- craft? -- out of public sight, on private grounds, sometimes with the use rights not as well established as the participants have been led to believe.  These people present -- subject to the limitations of the modern world -- conflict spanning the years from the Roman Empire in northern Europe to the Fall of Saigon.  The Vietnam era is too recent, though, to be as uncontroversial a public reenactment as Civil War reenactments have become.  The interests of reenactors of other eras also intrigue ... the most exotic possibly being the seventeenth century Polish Winged Hussars, whose warbonnets served to confuse horses acclimated to the idea of mounted humans, even humans wielding weapons, and whose lances were longer than those carried by other warriors of the day.  Mr Schroeder's education culminates when he works out that there was a Los Angeles before the Beach Boys and the freeway, and he plans his own re-enactment based on the peregrinations of the Spanish monks.

There's probably a Deep Implication in Man of War about deficiencies in the standard school curriculum.      Here the reader encounters people who didn't always do so well in school, and who often lack the author's establishmentarian credentials, yet who grasp deep currents of world history in ways the author had no prior awareness thereof.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

AFTER THE OIL BOOM.

In my report on an Amtrak detour ride in May, I suggested that Longview, Texas, merited mention as a destination for a train traveller, should that traveller have a more serious purpose than choosing a logical place to make a round trip without too much fretting about late trains and missing the return.  Longview is in northeast Texas, the connection for Shreveport, Louisiana (ah, for a connection to the Flying Crow at Texarkana) and at one time it was the commercial center for a major Texas oilfield.

Yes, that's a large, empty office building called The Petroleum Building, and it's for lease.  Longview, however, is most assuredly not a ghost town, and a little walking around reveals some possibilities for the  visitor.  The train gets in before most of the businesses and museums open for the day.  There is, however, a sandwich shop and coffee house with some local art on the walls, aesthetically akin to our House Cafe, to provide sustenance and obtain some local knowledge.

Several of the downtown streets have been prettied up with brick Lone Stars and decorative crosswalks. These intersections are controlled by traffic lights or stop signs, but wouldn't that star be a logical place to establish a rotary?

A class of fifth-graders was waiting to enter the Gregg County Historical Museum, and the staff allowed me to shadow them.  There's a cautionary tale here for municipalities that seek to save money by holding back the pay of public officials.

There's also some background on the reason the Texas Railroad Commission might have had to emerge as what the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries hoped to be.

Nothing humble about this oil company.

Recruitment and student retention are not new problems for higher education, either, although the approach Kilgore Junior College took to expanding female enrollment and fostering male student engagement might have had unintended consequences.

The Rangerettes might have been the prototype for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, or more generally for the production values of southern college football, and the effect of those production values on tailgatin' and boozin' might have been to increase, rather than decrease, both.  Kilgore itself is a community near Longview, which during the oil boom featured oil derricks on house and commercial lots through town.

The museum also had Ice Age and Indian lore material, and a staffer expert on these topics, who confirmed something I had heard here in the North, about Mississippian pyramid builders establishing a trade route delivering copper from what is now Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Mexico.

There's also a Museum of Fine Arts, which during my visit featured Charlie Brown's all-stars.

That's the first time Snoopy emerged as a shortstop, and possibly the explanation Lucy moved to right field.

Look closely, that's a real Joe Shlabotnik bat.

The downtown is walkable, although the train station is a respectable hike from downtown, and a number of the eateries observe the old tradition of closing between breakfast and lunch or lunch and supper, so do your scouting and plan your sightseeing accordingly.

THIRTY YEARS AGO.

Major League Baseball still offered the odd day doubleheader (none of this day-night, everybody clear the stadium after the first game and come back on a new ticket barbarism) and the Milwaukee Brewers, then in the American League, took two at County Stadium from the White Sox to go a half game ahead of the Red Sox.

NO PRICE DISCOVERY?

"Aid-eligible institutions raise tuitions to maximize aid."  That ought not come as much of a surprise to anyone who has studied economics, although a recent NBER working paper by Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Claudia Goldin might add some institutional heft to the argument.

The authors only examined programs that award associate's degrees and nondegree certificates in fields including business, computer sciences and cosmetology. They didn't look at tuition charged for bachelor's degrees or at public and private nonprofit universities, which together educate roughly 90% of postsecondary students.

That's a topic for future research, as the non-profits are a more heterogeneous sample to evaluate. And it's heartening to see Professor Goldin, who made her Wisconsin teaching debut having to put up with me and a few friends in her class continuing to investigate topics of national import.

SCARCITY AND OPPORTUNITY COST.

Former High Washington Official Anne-Marie Slaughter gives up her High Washington Job to return to Princeton so as to get off the default high-power job treadmill.

For two years, I never left the office early enough to go to any stores other than those open 24 hours, which meant that everything from dry cleaning to hair appointments to Christmas shopping had to be done on weekends, amid children’s sporting events, music lessons, family meals, and conference calls. I was entitled to four hours of vacation per pay period, which came to one day of vacation a month. And I had it better than many of my peers in D.C.; Secretary Clinton deliberately came in around 8 a.m. and left around 7 p.m., to allow her close staff to have morning and evening time with their families (although of course she worked earlier and later, from home).

In short, the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be—at least not with a child experiencing a rocky adolescence. I realized what should have perhaps been obvious: having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had. The flip side is the harder truth: having it all was not possible in many types of jobs, including high government office—at least not for very long.

I am hardly alone in this realization. Michèle Flournoy stepped down after three years as undersecretary of defense for policy, the third-highest job in the department, to spend more time at home with her three children, two of whom are teenagers. Karen Hughes left her position as the counselor to President George W. Bush after a year and a half in Washington to go home to Texas for the sake of her family. Mary Matalin, who spent two years as an assistant to Bush and the counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney before stepping down to spend more time with her daughters, wrote: “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.”

"Control over your schedule" might be an emergent phenomenon, as people of ability walk away from supposedly high-prestige positions over the unreasonable expectations employers have.  Former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin suggests that a little legislation might be helpful, particularly where individual employers might not perceive the same pressure to offer less onerous terms of work.

Women and men in top management positions often can negotiate flexibility, either in the number of hours worked, where they work, or how many days they work. Mid-level and low-level earners rarely have that opportunity because they have little power, and fear that by asking for flexibility they might be fired.

England and Australia have come up with a compromise that works for most employers and employees. It’s called the Right to Request Flexibility. An employee may ask her or his boss for flexibility without risking dismissal. The employer does not have to grant the request, but they are required to negotiate a compromise. If it is not achieved, the case goes to a tribunal. Employers have grown to like the law because it enables them to attract and retain talent, which saves them much more money in the long term than the cost of flexibility. James Wall, former vice president at Deloitte, calculates that it costs two to five times an annual salary to retrain a new employee, women and men alike.

To some extent, though, a request for flexibility resembles a signal of low ambition, the tragic and nasty reality Ross Douthat identifies in his reaction to Ms Slaughter's essay.

Did the male breadwinners of yore, with their wives and kids waiting at home after a long day at the factory or the office, “have it all” in anything like the sense that today’s wistful working mothers seem to mean by the phrase? No, they did not: Most of them worked longer hours and spent less time with their families than today’s ideals of fatherhood would permit; many of them no doubt retired and died wishing that it could have been otherwise.

Perhaps so, although those Organization Men might have been neglecting their children or their golf games so as to provide better for those children.

A more family-friendly workplace is a plausible and worthwhile goal, but the employee or public servant who is willing to sacrifice time at home in order “to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra hours that the international date line affords you” will always, always have a professional advantage over a peer who wants to leave at 5 PM to see their family or telecommute two days a week.

In the absence of ways to identify high performers without performance tests, that may always be the case.

SEE THAT BIG HOUSE, SEE THAT SMALL HOUSE?

Among the books in the departmental housecleaning stack (anyone with any experience around a university knows about departmental housecleaning stacks) was the seventh edition of Paula S. Rothenberg's Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, and once Book Review N^o. 24 is done, it goes back to the housecleaning stacks.  It's an anthology, and the only apparent organizing theme is that some people lead pretty miserable lives, and that misery is due in some part to circumstances beyond those people's control, which the compiler would like readers to believe can be summarized as the multiple oppressions of race, class and gender.  But if you'd like to find an antidote to the poverty of cultural studies, such as, oh, a coherent logical framework, keep looking.  You get the usual language about intersecting modes of oppression, but you also get essays in Comparative Victimization in which the tussles between gang-bangers of Latin American extraction and gang-bangers of African or Asian extraction suggest there is no one model of marginalization.  That is, once one rules out "deficient life-management skills", something that an extract from William Ryan's Blaming the Victim rules out.  Never mind that the toddler enters pre-school or kindergarten deficient in reading and calculating skills, and the pre-school corrects that.  Never mind that according to Allan Bloom, the freshman enters college uncivilized, and the opening of the American Mind corrects that.  And you get Holly Sklar's extended meditation on see that big house, see that small house, but no basis for doing anything other than commiserating.  (I found this post that suggests where to go from that information.)

The book is now available in an eighth edition, priced around $60.  Can you say third-party payments?  The customer reviews there say more about the book than I have.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

A DIFFICULT DAY FOR THE CREW DISPATCHERS.

The Cold Spring Shops "Free Rein to 110" campaign is bearing some fruit, with test runs taking place in Illinois, and scheduled service now in place in Michigan.  With the coming of summer, and the four-day energy-conserving schedule in place at the office, there's no guilt in checking the Amtrak website for business class space on a Michigan train.  Sure enough, space available to and from Royal Oak, the destination on a pre-speedup trip four years ago.  Because of changes Norfolk Southern has made to its freight service, the current service is faster west of Kalamazoo, but slower east to Detroit and Pontiac.  The new Dearborn station will be adjacent to the Henry Ford Museum, if that is ever built, and the faster services Michigan is promising might make day-trips from Chicago to that museum possible.  Perhaps in another four years?

Amtrak Wolverine 350, Chicago to Pontiac, 6 July 2012: P32 diesel 27, Amcafe 48178, Horizon coaches 54559, 54541, 54519, P32 diesel 26.  I don't know whether the diesels are top-and-tailed, or if the trailing one in each direction is along for the ride.  Temperature is hot and sticky.  Business Class allowed to board around 7 am; attendant passes out Chicago Tribune.  Leave 7.30.19 (watch set to the National Bureau of Standards online time service a few days earlier, not synchronized with the public clocks in Union Station); hold for inward Rock Island scoot at Englewood 7.44; Hammond-Whiting 8.00.42 - 8.03.13, meet 29 at station; 110 mph running begins in earnest east of Michigan City, New Buffalo 9.46.55 - 9.48.00; Niles 10.06.49 - 10.10.11; Dowagiac 10.19.49 - 10.21.05; head in Decatur, meet 351 10.30, stop at east siding switch 10.30.40, go 10.31.43, head in Lawton, meet 363 10.43, no stop; arrive Kalamazoo 10.58.10.   Thus endeth the fast running.  But there is fast running, something that's missing from the Hiawatha service, as is food service, something this mural in the cafe emphasizes.

Leave Kalamazoo 11.02.31; Battle Creek 11.31.52 - 11.37.18; Jackson 12.27.31 - 12.28.31; meet 353 east of Chelsea 12.52, no stop; Ann Arbor 1.08.58 - 1.45.11, large crowd waiting; Dearborn 1.43.02 - 1.45.41; Detroit 2.05 - 2.08, arrive Royal Oak 2.28.  The old Grand Trunk line northwest from Milwaukee Junction is in somewhat better shape north of the Ferndale intermodal terminal, although it is still jointed rail.  I think that's a downgrade from the state it was in in the late 1980s.

The Detroit area also dealt with some extreme weather, and power was out at businesses on the west side of Washington Street, but on, perhaps in limited quantities, on the east side.  The air conditioning was out at a Caribou coffee shop that was nevertheless full of people studying.  Royal Oak is home to the first BD's Mongolian Grill, an establishment where you put together a mix of proteins and vegetables that the staff will grill while you wait.  Good lunch, cold pop, the Barnes and Noble was open, and the Caribou could whip up iced Mint Conditions.  Lots more time to explore when the trains are on time.  Now to get that Henry Ford Museum stop open.

A few people boarded at Royal Oak, and the crew made a request that passengers not put luggage on seats or nap on two seats.  Three coaches constitute a skimpy rake for a weekend Michigan train, even with the colleges on summer schedule.  Leave Royal Oak 5.55.30, conductor advises a delay with an intermodal train going into the Ferndale yard 5.59.36; stop, start, stop, start, stop, good to go 6.07.12; Detroit 6.28.28 - 6.31.06; Dearborn 6.49.25 - 6.52.13, meet 352 near Wayne Junction 6.54; Ann Arbor 7.23.25 - 7.26.30.

This diesel and coach, damaged sometime this spring, await shipment to Beech Grove or Wilmington from Jackson.  There's still a Conrail Shared Assets area in Michigan.  Jackson 8.01.09 - 8.03.00; conductor advises there is a brush fire ahead near the Jackson airport and we will be held.  Stop 8.12, moving 9.41 at restricted speed; conductor advises we have not been cleared past the fire, which is still not struck, stop 10.20, go 10.29, pass fire site 10.39, pass Albion 10.54.  Train will swap crews with 354: stop 11.03 to trade engineers, move 11.08, stop 11.09 to swap train crews, go 11.15; arrive Battle Creek 11.44.01, conductor advises passengers to hit the bricks to smoke, as there will be another crew exchange, this crew delayed a few hours on 364 account engine troubles in Chicago.  Go 11.56.25; Kalamazoo 12.26.20 - 12.31.06, train loading on track away from station platform; Dowagiac 12.55.46 - 12.56.31; Niles 1.05.49 - 1.07.16; all eastbound trains have arrived and left and temperatures are low enough to allow uninterrupted cruising at 110; New Buffalo 1.25.40 - 1.26.26; Michigan City 12.39.20 - 12.40.30 Central time, no chance of catching the last dinky to Aurora; Hammond 1.22.15 - 1.23.25; arrive Chicago 1.50.  The equipment for 8-28, with the Super Dome and Skytop Lounge Cedar Rapids, is leaving for the coach yard as we arrive.  Union Station now closes at 1 am or when the last Amtrak arrives, station staff advises there are all-night eateries in Greektown.  Yes, and some interesting people-watching -- the city that never sleeps is a different city after dark than by day.  First dinky of Saturday morning gets away at 6.30.  Hot shower and change of clothes welcome at 8.30.

DOUBLY LUCKY?

If one comes into the world on a Friday the Thirteenth, by the light of the full moon, one ought make the most of it. "For pagans, 13 is a lucky number. It corresponds with the number of full moons in a year."

PUSHED OUT?

Within Illinois, a combination of uncertainty over the future of the state pension plans, and a faculty getting older, thanks in part to years of downsizing, faculty are calling it a career.

The number of retirements at Northern Illinois University almost have doubled in the past four years. In calendar year 2009, 110 employees retired. In 2012, 204 employees are expected to retire, according to information received by SURS through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“It’s an unprecedented turnover,” said Steven Cunningham, vice president of Administration and Human Resources at NIU. “It’s about three times what it normally would be. It’s mostly caused by uncertainty caused by pension reform.”

That’s one factor that has led to a growing number of retirees, said Deborah Haliczer, director of employment relations with NIU’s Human Resources Department, which encompasses staff demographics.

A large percentage of NIU’s employees were hired in the 1970s and 1980s during a large period of growth, which means many of them are reaching retirement age.

That's the local news. At the state flagship, where they had a clout list but no rowing team, there's something similar in progress.

"Folks are very concerned with what's happening in Springfield with pensions," said Jack Dempsey, executive director of UI Facilities and Services. "Whether it's true or not, people believe if they retire they secure their benefits. Folks who are on the fence, they're making the choice to go now."

Figures provided by the State Universities Retirement System as of June 12 show the number of people planning to retire before July 2 at the UI's Urbana campus doubled this calendar year over the same period in 2011, from 223 to 491. The university's overall numbers showed a similar trend, with 1,008 employees planning to retire before July 2 this year compared with 507 during the first six months of 2011.

"The numbers are definitely up across our employee categories," said Barbara Wilson, UI vice provost for academic affairs at the Urbana campus.

Whether the same dynamic is at work elsewhere remains to be seen.  A professor at Georgia Southern sent a letter to his colleagues that Inside Higher Ed suggests might be a lament against the rise of the all-administrative university.

As people have forwarded it to colleagues elsewhere, frequently using the phrase "speaking truth to power," many are saying that [Georgia Southern literature and philosophy professor David] Dudley has captured many of the things that are wrong in higher education today, especially at the non-flagship, non-elite public institutions that most students attend.

The incentives may vary among universities.

Tenure is a property right and Stanford is trying to buy back that right from the age 70+ faculty.

Now there is a hidden information issue here. Each tenured faculty member has private information about what is the lowest payment he/she would need in order to induce him to retire early. Somebody who is sick or sick of his colleagues would need a smaller incentive then a guy who thinks that he is on the verge of coming up with his "General Theory of Economics" or doesn't like to hang out with his spouse.

Note, in the exalted climate of the fifty institutions that claim to be the international top ten, we're not talking about more downsizing from headquarters, intrusions by the Assessment Weenies, and parking permits advertising football.

TEMPERING PRINCIPLE WITH PRACTICALITY.

In the aftermath of the late June dual derechos, the commentariat begins to weigh in on the effects of bad weather.  To Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth, the power failure is cause for reflection on the ubiquity of cheap electricity and air conditioning.

So many Americans—spoon-fed by a "go green" education system and media—live under the delusion that things were better in the past than they are now. Sure the economy is bad, but all we had to do is live for 72 hours without AC, TV, a dishwasher, a hair dryer and Google to appreciate how much progress has been made in the past 20, 30, and 50 years. Today a larger percentage of poor people have access to air conditioning than the average middle-class family did in 1960.

To Daphne Wysham of the Institute for Policy Studies, it's cause to contemplate the connection between the power for those conveniences and the immoderate weather.

Solar and wind power may seem like pricey alternatives to you, versus energy derived from coal, nuclear reactors, oil, and gas. But they also don't enjoy the same hefty subsidies. People, governments, and companies are spending countless dollars adjusting to the costs of a crisis of our own making. It’s a big gamble. In the best-case scenario, we may just throw out a refrigerator’s worth of spoiled food or spend a night or two in a hotel. In the worst-case scenario, the Earth will become uninhabitable.

Is it really more expensive to switch to greener power sources and drive less? When you add up all the costs of doing otherwise — no way. By investing in cleaner energy sources now, we can save the lives of countless innocent victims — perhaps even those we love the most — from storms that should only appear in our nightmares.

One quibble. Years ago, I did some work with the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency's Common Sense Initiative, and in those days, which coincided with the 1988 midwestern drought, we understood that nuclear-steam generating stations had a lot of potential for reducing greenhouse gases at the power plant.  By all means, continue the research on wind and solar and bio-coal, but don't rule out some of the legacy power sources.

WON THE WAR, LOST THE PEACE.

A recent issue of World War II included a list of recommended books from investment screamer Jim Cramer.  One title, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945 got Mr Cramer's endorsement as "The best-researched book yet to come out about where the war was truly won."  It is well, and thoroughly, researched.  It is also well organised and relatively short, two features contributing to a favourable Book Review No. 23.  The Great Patriotic War, to use the Soviet term, or the Ostfront, as the Germans had it, involved millions of men and numerous skirmishes as part of or in preparation for or incidental to the major set-piece battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk that get much of the attention.  It's thus easy to produce excessively complicated histories with lots of maps and units and minutiae.  Author Evan Mawdsley resists that temptation: for example, the description of the opening phases of Operation Babarossa occupy 32 pages and it might be possible to read them in less time than the opening movement of the Shostakovich Leningrad Symphony requires.  The author also suggests that Stalingrad and Kursk are not necessarily the pivotal events of the 1942 and 1943 campaigns: the outcome might have actually been determined or avoided by command decisions earlier in the campaign seasons.  By the end of 1944, however, the Soviets had organized their forces in such a way that campaign season lasted all year.  What intrigues, though, is the possibility Professor Mawdsley suggests of the successful Soviet war effort confirming the Stalinist model of political organization as something to be continued after the war ended.  (The Germans, Italians, and Japanese had to develop new models.)  Stalinist rigidities, combined with Russian nationalism, ultimately undid the Soviet Union.  Whether the end of the Great Depression coming with the end of World War II for the United States similarly ossified the New Industrial State and the Vital Progressive Center remains as a topic for future research.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

WISCONSIN WHERE THEY ROW.

The Official Preppy Handbook suggests that rowing is a proper Preppy sport, even though it is done well at Wisconsin.  So well, indeed, that Ohio State recognizes it, and the University sells a book so titled.

For years, coaches of the rowing teams recruited by hanging out at orientation or registration (when all payments were received at the Red Gym, that's where the men's coach would be).  That's still the case, as a rundown of Wisconsin Olympians reveals.

Grant James, 24, rowing: The native of DeKalb, Ill., had never rowed until he was recruited by UW coach Chris Clark during freshman orientation in 2005. Seven years later he's going to the Olympics as a member of the U.S. men's eight.

Ross James, 24, rowing: Grant's twin brother, Ross was the last rower to earn his spot in the boat for the U.S. men's eight. Ross rows on the port side of the boat, Grant the starboard side.

Several other Wisconsin rowers will participate.  The James brothers didn't play sports in high school.

DeKalb natives Grant and Ross James each have the 6-foot-6 body of a basketball player, the lungs and legs of an elite cross country runner, and the poise of a marksman, and the pair is set to compete in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London starting this month.


But you won’t remember reading about the twins’ athletic feats in high school, and most readers probably never knew about their athletic gifts when the pair walked the halls of what is now Huntley Middle School. [The high school recently moved to a new campus on the north side of town, with a larger athletic plant, but no planetarium.]


The duo never played football or basketball, although coaches pined for their services over the years, and only have a few years of baseball to their credit at DeKalb.

Sometimes, the choice of a university matters.

The pair were part of the eight-man boat that won the 2008 national championship for Wisconsin, and the 24-year-olds will start their Olympic quest July 28 in the preliminary round of the eight-man competition.


"There are rowers out there walking around that are as good as them that will never know how good they could have been,” Clark said.

Sure. Instead of going to Wisconsin, where they row, they matriculated at Illinois.