A WAUKESHA MASSACRE EACH WEEKEND.

Today marks a year since the Waukesha Christmas Parade Massacre, and we've already noted the toll of bad driving in Milwaukee.  The people who live along the dangerous roads are taking an interest in traffic taming and other measures.  Good.  Milwaukee is a dangerous place to live: Milwaukee breaks city homicide record for third year in a row.

Saturday, a 43-year-old man was killed near Hopkins and Hampton, the death that broke the record. Police are seeking unknown suspects in that case.

Michael Ray is a business owner in that area who says violent acts like these not only affect safety in the community, but prevent people from investing in the area.

"It's a major setback for me being a business in this area when already a lot of businesses closed over here," said Ray.

Residents can pin their hopes on violence mitigation programs and other social work. Ultimately, though, it's on people in Milwaukee or Chicago or Los Angeles or Philadelphia to get rid of their soft-on-crime Soros prosecutors.  If the unmitigated violence stays within city limits, arguably, that is a decision voters can make, to have a different balance of mitigation and prosecution than people in Waukesha vote for.  Sometimes, though, the suspect out on no bail goes outside the county to commit the crime.

The weekend just concluded in Milwaukee was mostly peaceful.

Milwaukee police are investigating six shootings overnight Monday, where more than half of the victims are teens.

Police are searching for suspects in all the shootings, which all happened within the span of four hours across the city. But all those who were shot are expected to survive.

The article does not document whether any of the suspects might have prior records.

THE DOUBLE SAW BY WAS DIFFICULT ENOUGH IN STEAM DAYS.

Here's a look at the maneuver, using a computer simulation.

Anyone who has ever carried this off in real life, or on a model railroad, where there's play value and a lot of cracking wise going on during the evolution, will have made use of, or at least thought of making use of, that trailing point spur the first train encounters to stash enough of the train to obviate all the to-ing-and-fro-ing that otherwise follows.  "If trains that are both too long for a siding have to meet, it is a very time consuming process, and something that the dispatcher will avoid at all costs."  Figure two hours, and that's with five people available on each train to help with flagging and getting the iron and connecting the air and all the other stuff.

Apparently, though, the existing rash of discouraging traffic by downsizing hasn't driven enough shippers away.

In October CSX Transportation ran two overlength merchandise trains at each other on its single-track mainline between Savannah and Augusta, Ga. The plan was to do a double saw-by — a maneuver as complicated and time-consuming as you can imagine — to get the no-fitters past each other. But that plan went out the window when the 12,000-footer tripped a hot box detector. While the conductor hit the ground to find the problem, the crew of the 11,000-footer was instructed to leave half of its train in a siding, then proceed to the next siding to await the 12,000-footer. Once it passed, the 11,000-footer had to retrace its steps and put its train back together before heading back in the right direction.

The idea behind long trains is as simple as it is old. Move your tonnage on fewer but longer trains and you save crew, locomotive, and fuel costs.

The savings can be illusory, though, if you take the concept to the extreme. In the CSX example, both manifest trains had to be recrewed. So did two locals caught up in the mess. Amtrak’s Silver Star was delayed 45 minutes. And, most importantly, the customers’ freight was delayed almost 5 hours.

These days, there are two crew members per train, the engineer, and the conductor, who is often rated as an engineer as well. Nobody to walk ahead from the caboose, and unless there's somebody from the mechanical department with a pickup truck available to help with the joints and getting the air, there's a lot of walking by a few people, even if you're breaking the shorter train at two sidings, thus creating a single saw-by.

Maybe one of these days the people who look at the financials will see what a false economy the long trains are.

Railroads continue to push the limits of common sense with megatrains. On subdivisions where long sidings are few and far between, the no-fitter trains extend meet delays. Even double-track mains aren’t immune. Monster trains can bog down the double iron by taking longer to enter and exit permanent and temporary speed restrictions. Megatrains also encounter more frequent mechanical problems. The law of averages says that the more cars in a train, the more likely there’s a bad apple in the bunch.

Given all this collateral damage, why would some Class I railroads continue their love affair with trains that don’t fit their physical plants? It’s because they care more about the operating ratio and investors than they do about providing reliable service.

The service design veterans I spoke with agreed it’s bad railroading to run no-fitter trains in both directions in single-track territory. It’s also not a good idea to run lumbering behemoths that turn a fast double-track corridor into molasses. The toll on service simply isn’t worth it. And the supposed operational savings are all too often offset by unpredictability of recrewing trains en route.

Those who do not remember the Chicago Great Western might be compelled to repeat it.

CAO NI MA.

Reason's Sarah McLaughlin describes "a pretty scary moment" at George Washington University.

Last month, global protests unfurled in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party's National Congress. Dissenters around the world called for dignity, freedom, and an end to "zero COVID" in China. At George Washington University (GWU), an anonymous group of Chinese students joined the protests, continuing their monthslong campus campaign against the CCP and its censors.

Because of the very real potential for reprisal against the students and their families both at home in China and here in the United States, their anonymity is vitally important—and closely guarded. But while they were posting flyers recently, a man approached them, spoke to them in Chinese, demanded that they identify themselves, and pulled out his phone and pressed record. Months earlier, some of their fellow students had demanded their university unmask and punish them. Their anonymity, so carefully preserved, remains on a knife's edge.

If you see something, say something.  The article strongly suggests that George Washington's administration and faculty are too pusillanimous to tell the Chi Coms what they can do with their surveillance.  All that is necessary for these Chi Com thugs to get their way is for Normals to do nothing.

What does an individual in an oppressive society owe his fellow citizens when he has the opportunity to speak freely? Does he have a duty to say something, even if it puts him in harm's way?

To most Americans, this may come across as an abstraction. We all have different ideas about citizenship, what it requires of us, and our obligations to other Americans. But these debates take place within our free society. The parameters, and the stakes, are different. The consequences we fear are usually social, not legal.

To China's politically dissident students, though, whose travels take them from Barcelona to Brisbane to Berkeley, this is a profound question. Their status as international students abroad grants them temporary reprieve from the CCP's most blatant and immediate forms of suppression and protections—on paper, at least—for their right to speak freely in their campus and host country. Those liberties, though, come with an asterisk. Chinese students know all too well that their activities remain closely surveilled even overseas.

So, too, can the activities of minor Chinese officials be surveilled.  Somebody publicly asking overseas students to reveal their faces and recording the protest is asking to be recorded himself.  Preferably by College Republicans, but any old passer-by will do.  It's not likely that the Chi Coms are sending senior intelligence officers to engage in intimidation; it's more likely that any minor functionary whose image ends up on social media, particularly if it's College Republicans or Young America's Foundation social media, is going to find himself reassigned somewhere out of country.  Patriots in Barcelona or Brisbane or Manchester, pay attention.

In addition, a person recording a public gathering has no grounds for objecting to other people recording the public gathering, and the proper response to a Chi Com functionary asking a passer-by to stop recording him is to say no; and whether that functionary persists in asking, or escalates, or not, advise campus security or local law enforcement what is going on.  Our turf, our rules.  Let us see videos of Chi Com functionaries moping off.

What might be spectacular is for campus conservative students to turn out in support of the Chinese dissidents.  Particularly if there might be students with a Marine or Special Forces background in the rally: not, mind you, to use force, let campus security know if the functionary gets cranky, but just to let the functionaries think twice.

IMMIGRATION POLICY IS TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE TO POLITICIANS.

Now that the electoral dust has settled, continuing Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, still fearful of a primary challenge from his left, hopes to get some sort of immigration amnesty through.  "We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome … [and] get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented there are here." That's an argument unlikely to convince anybody, as it reduces (the way economist Richard Thaler put it, en Español) to "We need more immigrants to pay pensions". The Social Security and Medicare trust funds are in trouble, but bringing in more taxpayers to work now to support current pensioners continues the Ponzi scheme, it doesn't fix anything.

CORONA WISDOM.

Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux continues to call corona tyrants to account.  Herewith a few.  First, "We're now all paying the terrible price for lockdown."

The true cost of this terrible social experiment is now becoming clearer. Health professionals warned at the time that lockdowns would have a serious impact on mental health and on the diagnosis and treatment of other conditions. All this has come to pass as surely as Rishi Sunak’s warnings about the cost. Excess deaths are currently running at about 10 per cent above historic rates, almost all from conditions other than Covid. By far the biggest contributor is dementia, a condition aggravated by loneliness and lack of stimulation.

It definitely wasn't For. The. Children.

The full cost of the Covid-19 school shutdowns will take years to understand, but here’s another estimate that will make many parents livid: If the recent learning loss can’t be reversed, it would equate to a 1.6% drop in lifetime earnings for the average K-12 student, or a nationwide total of some $900 billion.

There are instructive links addressing other topics as well.

THE FIRST TIME AS TRAGEDY, THE SECOND TIME AS FARCE.

Shortly after the coming of Amtrak, some Bright Sort got the idea of turning Washington, D.C. Union Station into some sort of Bicentennial Welcome Center.  I don't know if that ever worked, or if all your tax dollars paid for was an early-day multimedia display that didn't work very well, or simply a fetid indoor swamp.

Subsequently, wiser heads prevailed, and the station became something more like a station, and I was able to compare the retail spaces there and Nürnberg, although a complaint that I have directed at Amtrak elsewhere, namely, that there isn't sufficient waiting space devoted to waiting for trains, meaning passengers waiting to be allowed onto regional trains form queues that clog the shopping space.  In Germany, the railroad knows what track your train will be on, and how the formation is marshalled, and you proceed to trackside without waiting for station staff to herd you through the gate.

If you hold sleeper space in Boston, Chicago, or Washington you rate a lounge with free pop and chips and that lounge is available for Acela riders.  Station staff might escort you to your car before the herd stampedes.

The last time I was in Washington was before the corona tyranny, and that, plus Washington being the home office of softness on crime, has had consequences for Union Station.

Union Station had as many as 100 stores more than two decades ago. It’s down to about 40 retailers and eateries while more than half its commercial space sits vacant.

Calls for fire and emergency services show the range of problems at the station, including drug and alcohol intoxication, overdoses and assaults. Meanwhile, foot traffic remains well below pre-pandemic levels, with Metro and commuter rail traffic roughly halved, even as Amtrak reaches more solid footing.

It's worth remembering that the bicentennial is going on fifty years ago, and all many of these commuters might know is the current incarnation.

Those who pass through the iconic station — and those who once visited but now stay away — say they are hoping for another infusion of life into Union Station. The Washington Post spoke to commuters, business owners, longtime visitors and others to learn how its decline has altered their views of one of D.C.’s most beloved architectural jewels.

I mean, when the Starbucks has closed down and the bums gripe about being evicted at 11 pm, that's not good, and it's all self-inflicted this time.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Confound it, can't we get through a Super Bowl or two, let alone establish the composition of the incoming Congress, before we focus on the next presidential election cycle?  Absurd. <bangs head against wall repeatedly>.  For what?  "GOP voters should give up on the idea that Trump is a winner."  The correlation of forces is not favorable.  "Biden has been a disaster. ... Trump is politically toxic and a serious electoral drag."

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

A LATTER DAY "MODEST PROPOSAL"?

Mispricing tuition?  "Charging history or English majors lower tuition in line with lower labor costs could attract back students who have been abandoning the humanities, Fidel J. Tavárez writes."

As Allen-Bradley marketing material noted, "An 'extra discount' is simply an expression of a product's worth: you get what you pay for."  That might apply to those humanities majors, and it's probably a good thing there are no comments at Inside Higher Ed any more, as the schadenfreude coming in from Normals might overwhelm the servers.  But is Mr Tavárez serious?

What’s behind this decline? Theories abound, from the proliferation of turgid, incomprehensible prose in the humanities to the lack of job opportunities for recently minted humanists. Likewise, among the most common alleged culprits are the neoliberal university and its emphasis on “practical” majors as well as the politicization of the humanities. The most convincing perspective I have seen so far was put forward by historian Benjamin Schmidt, who suggested that “the plunge seems not to reflect a sudden decline of interest in the humanities, or any sharp drop in the actual career prospects of humanities majors. Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying—in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market.”

Surely, many of the available explanations have varying degrees of validity. No complex problem has a monocausal explanation. What is surprising, however, is the fact that commentators have missed an essential part of the picture, namely the structure of tuition fees in most American universities. By this I don’t simply mean the astronomical costs of tuition—although this is also clearly a problem—but the fact that universities don’t routinely price tuition for different majors in relation to what it actually costs to educate a student in any given discipline.

It's not that universities aren't rationing the majors already.  I have recollections of business schools employing premium pricing, and for years enrollment at the junior and senior level has been controlled by grades either by the college (common in business and allied health) or at the department level.  Yes, that sort of restriction incentivizes grade grubbing of the form "I really need a B (or an A) in order to continue in that program.  In addition, there are sometimes materials or technology fees in the fine print for the marketable degrees that might not show up in English or gender studies or even underwater basketweaving.  (You mean those reeds and snorkels are costless?)

But I repeat, is Mr Tavárez serious?

This is not a mere theoretical or ethical point, for tuition mispricing may well be affecting student choices to students’ own detriment and that of the humanities. In the interest of transparency, I should confess that I would prefer a fully funded, free public system of higher education. But, given that we are unlikely to distort the market for public education, we should go all the way in marketizing it. Allow me to explain.

I shall begin with a question. Why do economics professors earn much more money than their counterparts in the humanities (see, for example, the chart below showing the salary differential between English and economics professors)? The answer, as economists themselves would be quick to point out, is not a mystery. It is simply a matter of supply and demand. In other words, there is more demand for economists, both in the academy and in the extra-academic labor market, than for humanists. At some point, demand outpaces the supply of economists on the job market, which naturally leads to wage growth.

As if that "fully funded, free public system" isn't itself a distortion.  Moreover, burn your economics textbook if it doesn't tell you anything about the adjustment of supply to demand.  Adjusted for risk, professors of economics cannot expect to do better than football coaches, or than professors of English.  If it's the salaries of English professors he'd like to raise, he really ought to welcome the production of more mediocre economists.

Given that economics degrees command higher salaries and that it costs almost exactly the same to obtain a degree in any liberal arts field, it is no mystery why students are opting for degrees in disciplines like economics. If tuition is going to be equally high no matter what, you might as well go for the field with the highest income potential, even if it means abandoning a discipline for which you have a comparative advantage and perhaps even a strong attraction. This is inefficient and leads to deleterious economic and social outcomes. Would we really be better off were we all to become mediocre economists, computer scientists, data scientists, etc. …?

Yes.  In the job market for athletic coaches, the equilibrium job description is for a high achiever that survived a lot of screening.  The also-rans might be holding tackling dummies in youth football.  In the job market for academic economists, the equilibrium job description is more like a modestly talented teacher who can produce a few Minimal Publishable Units.  Some screening, but less risk.  The also-rans might be in industry or setting up their own consulting shops.  The job market for professors of English appears to have the risk structure of football coaching, but without the high returns.  Want fries with that?

A RUSH LIMBAUGH SKIT OPPORTUNITY?

Republicans now have a majority in the House of Representatives, and that might make inquiries into the corona tyranny more likely, or perhaps more aggressive.

Once upon a time, the Limbaugh schtick included faux Congressional hearings, and a skit might open something like this:

Dr. Fauci, today we are interested in the connections between the National Institutes of Health and sponsored research undertaken by American universities in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  I am pleased to note that you have submitted your resignation: this was the minimum you should do in accepting a modicum of responsibility.  Before we begin, let me remind you that Admiral Boorda committed suicide when he may have made a minor mistake.

That open sounds like traditional Rushbo over-the-top, although it's based on a real Congressional hearing.  Sometimes a parody song would follow, or perhaps there would be a skit sending up the formalities of a hearing.

The hearings ought to be an obligation of Congress, no matter what party has the subpoena power.  The Best and the Brightest made more than a minor mistake.  We start with "Shut down small businesses but kept big corporations open, and Forced you to cover your face."

SLIPSTICK, SLIDE RULE, NO PURDUE?

Sorry, no, wrong kind of boilermakers.

The boilermakers’ union that represents 300 railroad workers has rejected their tentative agreement with the U.S. Class I systems, becoming the third labor organization to give a new contract a thumbs down.

The union announced today that its members rejected the contract that had been based on the recommendations of the Presidential Emergency Board convened this summer after railroads and the unions failed to reach a contract deal.

That's a relatively small union, compared to what it was in steam days, and yet, there might yet be derricks and snow plows with boilers that have to be serviced, and the union is joining the maintenance and signal workers in saying "not yet."  The full name of the union is International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers, which might give you some idea of what other useful crafts might be affected.

The article offers no reason for that Brotherhood's reluctance.  Developing.

VIRTUAL LIPSTICK ON A FROZEN PIG.

My views on weeknight football are a matter of public record.  That post notes a number of ways in which the disease has gone beyond the Mid-American Conference, and in which the recruiting practices in college football might lead to bad outcomes off the field, including but not limited to dead footballers in Virginia.

Closer to home, beer at lower than cellar temperatures and circuses not in a straw house are the order of the day.

Barstool Sports held a show before Tuesday’s matchup between the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University in Toledo, Ohio.

The show was hosted by founder and president of Barstool Sports Dave “El Presidente” Portnoy, Dan “Big Cat” Katz, Kayce Smith and Brandon Walker.

“It was an incredible experience,” Walker said. “It’s 30 degrees and snowing tonight, and Northern Illinois students showed up and showed out, they were awesome. They were energetic. They were engaged.”

Katz said he was impressed with the turnout of Huskie fans despite NIU football’s recent struggles as the team sat at 3-7 before Wednesday’s game.

Whether the enthusiasts who came out for a chance to be on sports cable went to the game is another matter.

Fans at the show commented on the impact of Barstool’s presence at NIU.

“I think that it really brings the NIU community together,” junior digital marketing and professional sales major Brenden Ivie said. “It’s great for all of us to not only interact with each other, but also to interact with the individuals of Barstool. It brings a different experience.”

The hosts announced at the end that the show plans to continue covering MACtion in the future.

“We’ll (Barstool Sports) do MACtion every year,” Portnoy said. “We were talking about that on the bus.”

Now I know why the main parking lot at Fatty's was barricaded yesterday. There is an overflow lot, which is across a stroad that carries much of the game day traffic, and a few people learned, the hard way, that Culver's mean business about their lot, just east of the tavern, being for butterburger eaters only.

It's instructive, also, to note that Illinois style pizza leaves a lot to be desired.

Portnoy mentioned during the show that he reviewed the pizza at Lord Stanley’s Annex Bar, Vinny’s and Pizza Pros, all local restaurants in DeKalb.

Portnoy stirred the crowd with his review of Vinny’s pizza.

“Trash,” Portnoy said. “Lord Stanley’s was better than Vinny’s, and the place across the street, Pro Pizza, that one was eh. Listen, you guys got some work to do on your pizza, let’s be honest.”

That sample didn't include Pizza Villa, which usually places well in the annual ranking of pizzerias, and Lord Stanley generally do score well.  None of these outlets do pizza Milwaukee style, alas.

A BIT OF THE CHRISTMAS STORE WILL REMAIN.

Milwaukee's Boston Store used to be eight floors of full-service department store, with a bargain basement, and a toy department up high.  Christmas shopping there used to be a big deal.  Recently, not so much, or at all.

There will, however, be candy canes and silver lanes at street level.

Fiserv, the Brookfield-based financial technology services company, will move its headquarters to downtown Milwaukee.

As part of a $40 million investment, the company will lease 160,000 square feet in the HUB640 building, 640 N. Vel R. Phillips Ave. The former Boston Store Building is located along the resurgent W. Wisconsin Ave. and a Kohl’s department store was announced in July for its first floor.

Kohl's, which began as a grocery chain, is now a department store chain that cooperates with Amazon for deliveries and exchanges.  The successor company to Boston Store is long gone.

DARRELL BROOKS IS NO BOBBY SEALE.

One way for people who consider themselves political prisoners or otherwise unjustly accused to call attention to their plight is to disrupt their trial, in the hopes of eliciting an overreaction from the authorities that will build sympathy for their cause.

That might have been the case in the trial of the "Chicago Seven" defendants, including Bobby Seale, who disrupted the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and during the trial Mr Seale did a number of the same things Waukesha parade massacre perpetrator Darrell Brooks did.  The trial judge had him bound and gagged and chained to a chair, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young wrote a song about it.

The trial judge in Waukesha, who probably had more people emulating her look for Hallowe'en thanChicago's Julius Hoffman, dealt with Mr Brooks's antics by exiling him to a spare courtroom with a video connection, and putting him on mute.  She had a precedent that might have followed from the Chicago Seven trial to have him gagged, but the mute button is a kinder and gentler option.

That is, unless you fancy yourself heir to Crosby, Stills.

According to Laura Halbert, the conscience of Woke Wypipo in Watertown, Wisconsin, it was a travesty. She writes in the Watertown Daily Times that the verdict in the trial in which the defendant -- a lifelong violent criminal and sex offender -- represented himself, and had to be ejected several times for disruptive behavior, was "a racist, unjust outcome".

Because of course it was.  From the letter:  "Mr. Brooks’ actions were completely justified given the way he has been treated the past year, and throughout his life."  Use past perceived oppression to elicit a strong response, and hope for sympathy.  That's predictable.  What's less predictable is another observation from that letter.  "Do the members of the jury understand the meaning of equity in our criminal justice system? Why wasn’t Mr. Brooks allowed to argue for jury nullification?"

Jury nullification?  Has she just had some kind of mushroom?

YOU CAN'T CAPTURE THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS.

Power Line's John Hinderaker, in "Why Climate Models Don't Work", points readers to Greg Chapman's "The Dirty Secrets inside the Black Box Climate Models."  It's familiar ground to regular readers of Power Line, or of Cold Spring Shops.  All the same, it's useful to have the message close to the top in case new readers (for some reason, Blogger recorded a lot of page views just before the election, and daily traffic is still a little higher: thanks for sticking around, whoever you are).

Here's the key.  "The short form of Steven Hayward's argument is 'in a complex adaptive system it is impossible to capture the behavior of the system without fully describing it in your model.'"  You can't capture the movement of the atmosphere at the molecular level, or even at the basketball level.  Here's Mr Chapman.

In order to represent the earth in a computer model, a grid of cells is constructed from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the atmosphere. Within each cell, the component properties, such as temperature, pressure, solids, liquids and vapour, are uniform.

The size of the cells varies between models and within models. Ideally, they should be as small as possible as properties vary continuously in the real world, but the resolution is constrained by computing power. Typically, the cell area is around 100×100 km² even though there is considerable atmospheric variation over such distances, requiring each of the physical properties within the cell to be averaged to a single value. This introduces an unavoidable error into the models even before they start to run.

It's a non-trivial avoidable error: are there no tornadoes, one tornado, or several tornadoes in two counties of Iowa, which is one way of thinking about a cell a hundred kilometers on a side and however high the atmosphere is?  Or, as I put it in another old post,

The fundamental problem remains one of computing capacity. If you attempt to capture the essential elements, the complexity of the adaptive system we call the atmosphere puts the computers in a position of taking longer to anticipate the changes than it does for the actual changes to manifest themselves. Me again. "Put another way, it would take longer to extrapolate a century-long climate emergency on the computer than it would take for the emergency to materialize. And rewriting the code in something other than FORTRAN would not change that reality. Let the fun begin."

Instead, you have no tornadoes, or one tornado, or a tornado outbreak, in one of your cells.  Now, to get some idea of how wild the future climate will be, you have to initialize the cells.  What with?  Your best guess, because it's good practice to see how well the simulation stacks up against reality, but at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, there weren't a lot of weather stations.  If you could get something that looks like current reality from a variety of initial conditions, that's encouraging, but what you will get is chaos.  Mr Chapman confirms.  "The climate system is chaotic which essentially means any model will be a poor predictor of the future – you can’t even make a model of a lottery ball machine (which is a comparatively a much simpler and smaller interacting system) and use it to predict the outcome of the next draw."  But your grant, or perhaps your policy shop's future, depends on a prediction anyway, and off you go.  Perhaps that's permissible.  "There's nothing wrong with something being amiss in the models, as long as the models provide a better explanation of reality than a coin flip, and as long as the models aren't misused. There is nothing wrong with a scientific tool having large out-of-sample forecast errors, as long as that tool isn't being used as a guide to public policy."

But the whole point of the climate modeling is to have a guide to public policy.  Oops.

COME UP WITH A BETTER VALUE PROPOSITION.

A professional basketball player called Brittney Griner is on her way to gulag.  She should never have been in Russia, claims sports pundit Annie Costabile.  "The greatest women’s basketball players aren’t playing year-round, taking as little as a week to two weeks off between the WNBA season and their season overseas, strictly for the love of the game. They’re playing to make up for lost revenue because of low salaries in the U.S." I could say that's an artifact of wanting to live more like tsarist princesses or starlets than about low salaries, although the fundamental problem remains the same.  "The absence of a value proposition with general appeal continues to hurt women's sports."  That's predictably not how Ms Costabile sees things.

Critics of the WNBA, a league comprised primarily by Black women which is nearing its 27th season, like to poke holes in the value of the league by comparing it to the billion-dollar business that is the NBA. What they fail to take into consideration is how differently the two leagues and their athletes have been invested in. Look no further than endorsement opportunities for the first overall draft pick in both leagues.

In April, Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas detailed the pay inequity that led to Griner’s decision to pursue overseas opportunities. The max base salary in the WNBA is close to $230,000, but in Russia, top athletes like Griner were making seven-figure salaries playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

Might that be because the best Russian male basketball players are in the European leagues, or the National Basketball Association itself? (Were I still teaching the capstone paper course, that would be a topic for a keen student to investigate. More edifying than stadium subsidies?)  Or might there be differences in endorsement opportunities?  Michael Jordan said (perhaps apocryphally) "Republicans buy sneakers too."  Of late, I've seen LeBron James peddling AT&T phones, with a performer of European origin  playing Lily, the sales agent.  Too often, though, the women's sports leagues aggressively pitch their show to the wokest.  "Better, though, to think about expanding the fan base than to keep doing the same thing."

That's not where Ms Costabile wants to go.

The greatest women’s basketball players aren’t playing year-round, taking as little as a week to two weeks off between the WNBA season and their season overseas, strictly for the love of the game. They’re playing to make up for lost revenue because of low salaries in the United States.

Candace Parker, who played for UMMC Ekaterinburg from 2010 to 2015, said it was the lucrative overseas contracts that she signed throughout her career that allowed her to afford private education for her kids and her home in Los Angeles. Parker hasn’t played overseas since 2018.

According to Forbes, Parker’s endorsement earnings were $5.5 million last year. By comparison, Derrick Rose’s last reported endorsement figure was $13 million in 2017.

Rose was taken with the first overall pick by the Bulls the same year Parker was taken first by the Sparks.

How much money did the lady who plays Lily, Milana Aleksandrovna Vayntrub, born in Uzbekistan make?  Note, not simply from selling smartphones, from appearances in Ghostbusters (the remake) and other shows.  It's not simply, as Ms Costabile suggests, that our country doesn't properly value women.  It might be that the women's sports industry doesn't properly value potential fans.

Maybe, just maybe, the people managing women's basketball, whether at the team, conference, association, or professional level, ought come up with a better value proposition than "look how unfair this all is." That pitch has probably won over all the professional feminists and alphabet people that are there to be won over. It's unlikely to entice any new eyeballs onto the screen or into the stands.

They're not learning. The Northern Illinois women's team now open the game with a video explaining why their national anthem protest isn't a protest.  If you're explaining, you're losing.

So, too, might it be with the WNBA.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 19,284.

From the beginning of this series, a year and a half ago, we noted, "The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health."

The verdict is in.  "Sweden Wins! Country That Refused Lockdown and Kept Schools Open Has Lowest Pandemic Mortality in the World."  Not only that, the Swedes did better on excess deaths from causes other than coronavirus.

The somewhat less meaningful Covid death tally (per million population) does not have the same relative magnitude since different countries use different methods for recording what is and what isn’t a Covid death, on top of the fact, of course, that it’s a Pyrrhic victory to mitigate Covid deaths at the expense of higher excess non-Covid deaths. Take a look at Canada and Israel as prime examples of this – remarkably low Covid deaths relative to the rest of the world but very much in the worst half of the dataset in terms of overall excess mortality.

The emergency decrees for the United States taken together, as well as Illinois, remain in effect, if in modified form.  The emergency is over.  The emergency powers should be rescinded.

These posts will continue until the emergency decrees end.  What Matt Margolis wrote about New York corona tyrant Kathy Hochul goes for Illinois as well.  "Frankly, anyone who voted for her deserves what they get. These people put party loyalty before their own safety and the safety of their families and neighbors."  I accept the decision of the voters.  I retain the right to call attention to what they've inflicted on themselves, and it's going to be fun come January, when two years of inflation adjustments to the motor fuel tax kick in, and later in the year, when the sales tax moratorium on groceries expires.

Maybe we're seeing more consequences of the internal migration among states.  "Across the country, Republican state executives who made a name for themselves by opposing business and school closures won reelection with far more comfortable margins than their first pre-pandemic runs."  Note this, dear reader, corona tyranny plus corruption undid the sitting governor of Nevada.  Nevada.  Elsewhere, though, corona tyrants retained their office.  "But in Nevada and a handful of other states, there were referendums available on pandemic policy, and with the exception of Michigan, restrictionists were lucky to hold onto power by their fingernails."  No mention of Illinois in that article.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.  With local, state, and federal governments in the United States changing the way they count infections (and they might be rethinking how they classify deaths) I'm not sure how valid any numbers, even from a service consistently used from month to month, is.

The latest report from Sweden counts 2,618,688 infections, up by 13,822 from last month, and 20,825 deaths, a change of 418 from that report.

The latest report from Illinois counts 3,834,425 infections, an increase of 50,842 over last month and 40,109 deaths, adding 266 to the Pritzker Body Count in one month.  End the emergency decrees.

As of this afternoon, the state appears to have ended their tally of vaccinations.  The most recent tally of vaccinations gives just under thirty million doses of the various vaccines administered as of today, November 14.  The state also appears to have ended their count of the scary variants.  The last update to that page was in December, 2021.

At Columbus Day, the governor trailed by 19,436.

As Oktoberfest season began, the governor trailed by 19,467.

At the start of the academic year, the governor trailed by 19,611.

At Bastille Day, the governor trailed by 19,567.

At Flag Day, the governor trailed by 19,295.

At Syttende Mai, the governor trailed by 19,149.

At Patriots Day, the governor trailed by 19,243.

At St. Patrick's Day, the governor trailed by 19,580.

At Valentine's Day, the governor trailed by 19,533.

At the National Day of Service, the governor trailed by 17,062.

Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week was growing by  less, that is, until the ukases went back into effect.  The details for earlier in 2021 and the end of 2020 are on page 2.

YOU CAN'T ABORT REALITY.

It's possible, as Bulwark contributor William Saletan notes, that protecting access to abortion was a bigger deal for voters, particularly at the margin, than the people who were anticipating a massive repudiation of the Jarrett regency thought.

In reading exit polls, it’s common to look at the subset of voters who said abortion was their “most important” issue. That can be misleading, because a lot of voters who care about abortion also care about inflation, crime, and other competing issues. It’s more useful to look at the “major impact” group, which logically encompasses the “most important” subset and is relatively unaffected by other issues the voter cares about. In the VoteCast survey, 47 percent of respondents said the overturn of Roe was a major factor in which candidates they voted for. And this half of the electorate chose Democratic House candidates over Republican House candidates by a margin of about 30 points.

Apparently, many of those voters came out on Election Day, particularly in college towns. No surprise there, keeping Plan B and Plan C available for cavorting at South Padre and having taxpayers pick up the tab, that is, if the (unconstitutional?) student loan cancellations are still in place next spring.  Forty years ago, we had evidence of financial aid money leading to students spending on stereos and trips; these days it's probably gaming computers and trips, but the phenomenon is the same.

LET'S GET TO MODEL RAILROAD SEASON.

The eleventh of November is Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth countries, Veterans Day in the States, and the beginning of Karneval in the Rhineland.

The model railroad show season gets into full swing in November.  Here's a look at the Rockford O Scalers show that opened the month.

Look for some new developments at Cold Spring Shops headquarters as well.

Those of you who have projects on workbenches, what are you waiting for?

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Let's not be stupid.  "I think Donald Trump would lose."  Indeed, he's his own worst enemy. "A red wave turned into a purple puddle, thanks to an orange man."  Yes, we would have had gridlock but for the former president injecting himself into the 2020 Georgia runoff.

How hard is it to reject the false binary?  "They both suck and nobody likes them but you gotta pick one."  Still too hard?  "[Voters] looked at all of that, (meaning inflation and empty shelves and crime -- Ed.) and looked at Republican alternative and said no thanks."  And why does information technology get in the way of learning who we picked?  "It is ridiculous that we are still waiting for results, even if we were told to expect it."

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

MARKETS FAIL. USE MARKETS.

That's the policy prescription of several economists associated with the George Mason approach to political economy.  Perhaps that's the answer I was seeking on Wednesday, when I wrote, "One area that might be of interest is the prediction markets, many of which going into the weekend valued the contracts 'Republican House' and 'Republican Senate' highly. Looks like those contracts didn't pan out."

John Stossel has done the work.  "The Election Betting Markets Fell Short. They're Still the Most Flexible Predictor."

The Good: We have divided government. Since Democrats no longer control Congress, they can't bankrupt America quite so fast!

The Bad: Prediction markets, which I touted as the best guide to elections, didn't do so well. Yes, they correctly said Republicans would take the House, but they'd also predicted Republicans would take the Senate. Polls and statistical modelers like Nate Silver did a bit better this time. They also said Republicans would win both, but they gave them only a slight edge.

That House majority is still not confirmed as of this afternoon.

Unfortunately, prediction markets are more useful at making sense of the situation within which we find ourselves, rather than ameliorating the situation.

Won't voters ever ask government to LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE?

It's so sad. All around the world, we don't learn.

About the best we can do is vote to gridlock it. Rolling back the more annoying features of government might call for more disruptive measures, such as the bond traders bailing on Brandon's borrowing.