GIANT ROLLING DUMPSTERS?

For years, railroading's gondola cars (on the railroad, pronounced gun-DOH-luh, GON-doh-la is a boat in Venice) came in forty foot varieties with or without drop bottoms, for stones or ores or coal, and a century ago the way for a consignee to empty one when dropping the bottom wasn't an issue was to hire a high school kid to shovel it out (!) and in longer varieties called "mill gondolas," which might or might not have had drop ends and sometimes hardware for handling long steel products.  Sometimes older gondolas would be relegated to hide service.  You wouldn't want to marshal them close to the caboose on a train, and pity the hobo who didn't see a pile of something geologic and thought that would be a convenient car to stow away in.

Of late, though, the gondolas sometimes look like this one, on the old Milwaukee Road at Sturtevant.  They're operated by Secure, a Canadian company, and, yes, they function as giant rolling dumpsters.

And yes, this mutation of gondolas has been under way for some time.  As power companies closed their coal-fired generating stations, a sizable fleet of bathtub gondolas, equipped with solid bottoms and rotary couplers in order to unload a train much faster than an army of high schoolers with shovels could do it, cascaded into railroad maintenance service as well as rolling bins that could carry more scrap bundles than your basic forty foot gon of days gone by.

LET THE ANACONDA'S COILS TIGHTEN.

As of this afternoon, Pakistani diplomats have forwarded a request from Iran to continue the cease-fire.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he will not go forward with new strikes on Iran at the request of Pakistani officials, extending the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Trump said Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir asked the U.S. to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as [Iranian] leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal” to end the war.

Trump added that the U.S. will continue to blockade Iranian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which has served as a key point of tension between the two countries.

No "unified proposal" suggests that the mullahs' ten point plan that Code Pink types endorsed, only yesterday, as "a workable basis for negotiations" might no longer be operative.  You'd think, if this Iranian academic correctly assesses the situation as “Iran believes it has the upper hand and that this must be established in any future confrontation,” that somebody would have informed the Pakistani mediators that the Iranian negotiators stand by their ten points, and then it would be up to National Command Authority to make counter-offers.

Our President seems to be in no hurry to send negotiators to Pakistan, which suggests he's standing by his base position, which is that the nuclear physics ends, the funding of terrorist proxies in other countries ends, the Strait of Hormuz  remains an international waterway with no tolls, and Iran's ports are closed until those conditions are met.

REALITY ALWAYS WINS.

Intellectuals forget that models are abstractions.

Intellectuals are rewarded for their models, not reality. And the data and analysis that looks elegant on paper is often disastrous on the ground. Yet, when their models are contradicted by reality, most intellectuals don’t have the courage to accept the reality, instead they double down on their models…

…and this is what turns them into idiots.

Go.  Read.  Understand.  Engage with reality.

Time to log off and mow the grass.

ACADEMIC INTROSPECTION MUST BEGIN WITH APPRAISAL OF FAILURES.

Penn historian Jonathan Zimmerman engages in constructive self-criticism in the house organ for business as usual in higher education, noting, correctly, that "Condescending dismissal is a terrific way to avoid the hard questions about our own complicity in the degradation of the university."

His article opens with an anecdote in which his colleagues re-enacted a cartoon.

The anecdote with which he opens his article has already received widespread play and mockery among the Militant Normals in social media.

In March of last year, about two months after President Trump returned to the White House, I traveled to Washington for a meeting of American education scholars. The opening panel focused — appropriately enough — on Trump’s threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. Then it was time for questions, and I raised my hand. I said that I agreed with all the critiques of Trump, but I also wondered what those of us who work in higher education might have done — or not done — to bring about this awful moment. Could we use it to look in the mirror, I asked, and not just to circle the wagons?

Dead silence. Then another member of the audience spoke up. “I just wanted to say that I was deeply offended by Professor Zimmerman’s use of the term ‘circle the wagons,’ which connotes a hateful history of Native American displacement and genocide,” she said, as I remember it. More awkward silence. Finally, the moderator of the panel interjected with something along the lines of: “Thank you for reminding us that we need to be careful in the language that we use to describe others.” So the panel began with a diatribe about Donald Trump’s assault on free speech and it concluded with a warning to watch our words.

Yes, I can easily envision the pursed-lip indignation, or perhaps the finger-wagging, or perhaps the "Azza" preface. Such people deserve the mockery that they get.

NATURAL INTELLIGENCE PRECEDES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Over the weekend, the Cold Spring Shops page view counter rolled over to eight million.  The seventh million rolled over in October of last year.  It's possible that the periodic spikes of views (a typical day racks up between two hundred and two thousand) into the tens of thousands are data centers combing the internet for information that artificial intelligence algorithms can masticate.

The world in which we live in which a great deal of the human anatomy, including but not limited to the circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems, supplies resources to keep our brains functioning.  It's no surprise, dear reader, that artificial intelligence algorithms consume proportionately more resources for what might be suboptimal outcomes,  An algorithm is only as good as its programming and the inputs it receives.

I extend my thanks, once again, to the two hundred to two thousand real readers who look in each day, and I surely don't lack for things to carry on about.  There might be opportunities upcoming to carry about stuff not as directly influenced by the day's news.

A LOT CAN CHANGE IN A WEEK.

At the beginning of the week, a Daily Kos diarist posted a cartoon critical of United States war aims.

That's likely a dig at Our President's dig at Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

I SUMMON DEAD PEOPLE.

In today's news:  "60 dead people found on Illinois jury panel, triggering constitutional challenge."

The "challenge" involves legalities?  What does "tried by a jury of your peers" mean?

A Whiteside County jury panel summoned for an April trial contains at least 60 dead people – including one person who died 35 years ago – raising allegations of a systemic flaw in how Illinois compiles statewide jury lists, according to a motion filed by a defendant’s attorney.

The discovery has prompted a constitutional challenge that goes far beyond Whiteside County, suggesting a statewide problem that systematically excludes younger citizens from jury duty in violation of the Sixth Amendment.

Thus far, nobody has called attention to a potentially troubling implication.

The numbers are stark. Of the 200 people summoned for jury duty in April, 60 are confirmed dead. The median age of the panel is 72, compared with 43 years for Whiteside County’s actual population. And not a single person younger than 42 was summoned.

To repeat: the article's focus is on jury pools that skew old whilst defendant pools tend to skew younger.

THAT'S HOW IT IS WITH SACRED PRIORS.

I did not expect "For 'Sensitive Issues,' Read 'Sacred Priors'" to be validated so quickly or by an academician so highly placed.  And yet here we are.  "Garber Says He is ‘Disappointed’ by Student ‘Ignorance’ on Israel-Palestine Conflict."

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said he was “disappointed” by the widespread ignorance of Harvard students who expressed strong opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict — and their disinterest in learning the facts of the issue.

Speaking at an event in Manhattan, Garber said he was struck both by students who held firm views without a grasp of the underlying history and by those who chose to avoid forming views altogether.

“If you’re going to have strong views about an issue,” he said, “I would hope that at a University you would have the curiosity to learn the facts.”

The remarks mark a shift in emphasis for Garber, who has spent much of the past year warning about deteriorating conditions for free expression on campus. In a December podcast appearance, he argued that Harvard “went wrong” by allowing faculty to inject their personal views into the classroom, a shift he said discouraged open disagreement.

On Monday, Garber made clear he sees the problem extending beyond faculty.

Garber described the attitude among students as “disturbing” and “ignorant,” saying he was especially troubled by a combination of shallow knowledge and reluctance to engage in disagreement.

“What I really felt was most disturbing as a Jewish president, but also somebody who cares personally a lot about the issues that were being discussed, is the level of ignorance among people on all sides of this issue,” he said.

“The lack of knowledge and this unwillingness to have open dialogue pain me even more,” Garber added.

Where to begin?  What is the effect of nearly a half-century now of cracking down on speech that "creates a hostile environment" or is "harassing and demeaning?"  What is the effect of enabling some people to live their illusions because it is "their truth," and you get written up for questioning it, on that curiosity to learn the facts?  And how often have people learned that "dialogue" is a worship-word meaning the relevant deanlet gets to set the wrong-thinkers straight?

ROBERT REICH IS RIPE FOR THE MAD-HOUSE.

Not because he's engaging in the expected riling up of Common Dreams readers with "Trump Is Stark-Raving Mad—Impeach Him Now."  That's more or less expected, and it has been so for over ten years, complete with academicians who rely on their Liberal Bonas Fides to diagnose Our President's mental health on the basis of social media posts or out-takes from the news.

Rather, it's deeper in his essay, where the Argument from Authority gets weird.  "But some voices on the right — people who have long been supporters of Trump — have had enough."

Dear reader, who might those people be?  Marjorie "Madge" Greene.  Candace Owens.  Alex Jones.  Until about two minutes ago, those are people Commn Dreams types would refer to, if they bothered to at all, as avatars of that fascism that somehow still has not descended on Common Dreams, let alone these United States.  Judge for yourself whether his including two former staffers in supporting roles sufficiently moderates his polemic.

I've never considered the representative to be the quintessence of a philosopher queen, and "podcasting" might be a way to get paid to spout off without going to the trouble of auditioning at a local radio station and working your way up, the way Charlie Sykes got from writing Prof Scam to slagging on the "half-fast train" to becoming an occasional guest on whatever MSNBC call themselves these days.  If any of those people said things I agreed with, I did not treat that as endorsement of my position, nor did that alignment constitute my endorsement of anything they said.

But the self-styled progressives are almost as eager to embrace people who offer concurrence with them than they are to excommunicate people who violate a purity test.  Years ago, there was Ariana Huffington, whose pronouncements as some sort of conservative were on occasion cringe-worthy, and who instantly became a hero to many of the people who eagerly slagged on her as an "idiot" once she switched allegiance and put her money into what became the Huffington Post.

Robert Reich?  Predictably hysterical.

WHAT DOES VICTORY LOOK LIKE?

At the beginning of the month, Marc Thiessen with the American Enterprise Institute offered five steps for Our President to declare victory.

1.  Complete all remaining military tasks.
2.  Eliminate the remaining Iranian leaders who were spared for the purpose of negotiations.
3.  Unilaterally declare victory.
4.  Impose peace terms.
5.  Bar Iran from firing on protesters and set conditions for eventual regime collapse.

It's easier to sit at one's desk in Washington than it is to implement those things, but then, the thrust of his column is "accomplish enough to declare victory and go home."  The principal objectives of the United States are that the mullahs not acquire hot rocks and that Iran stop exporting politicized gangbangers throughout Asia Minor.  Those objectives align with those of Israel and the Gulf Arab states, although, as we repeatedly note, they are not congruent.

FOR "SENSITIVE ISSUES," READ "SACRED PRIORS."

It is the custom of college newspapers to recognize Conrail Day, er, sorry, April Fools' Day, for those of you in Cucamonga, with stories too crazy to be true.  For example, "NIU scraps Mountain West plans, pivots to Big Ten," which came with the disclaimer, "This story is entirely satire."

FOUR-ONE-FOUR.

Milwaukee's area code, which used to extend beyond city limits, is 4-1-4.  Thus, even though the telephone carriers have overlaid area codes as if they seek to tile a plane with irregular polygons, Sudsville boosters make today an opportunity to tout Milwaukee, bad drivers and injured basketball and baseball players notwithstanding.

I did attend high school in Milwaukee, but to this day crack wise about having to leave because I kept missing the five pin with my first ball of the frame.

Those fours and ones have another meaning here at Cold Spring Shops.

The model is increasingly like the prototype, it was built a quarter century ago, it moved a few freight cars, and it occupies space at the works.

THE MERCANTILIST TEMPTATION.

Those oil tankers that transported the final shipments out of the Arabian Gulf had to go someplace after they delivered their cargoes.  Many of them are heading to United States ports for their next load.

I don't know whether this train, which passed the train watching camera at Sturtevant on Sunday, is a load of ethanol or of Bakken crude.

The You Tube channel soundtrack includes Canadian Pacific radio, and of late train crews have been calling attention to trespassers more frequently of late.  Whether that reflects a security bulletin or the effect of better weather on kiddos looking for new places to take selfies I don't know.

I do know that Our President is hailing all those tankers heading Stateside to pick up, and some of his cheering section in the media are carrying on about "jobs" and "exports" and all the rest.  Which is true, but let us balance that against the higher prices for finished product and the efficiency losses from sending the natural gas crude carriers over longer distances between loads.

As far as the Strait of Hormuz, Windward's most recent briefing notes, "The operating environment is now defined by active enforcement, partial compliance, and continued evasion, with vessel movement shaped by both restriction and adaptation."  There are still some eight hundred ships of all kinds west of the strait, which is a lot of cargo still to move.  The briefing noted that one of the outbound ships flew the Chinese Flag with a Hong Kong port.  Some people are making a lot of noise about that.  The ship has a cargo from one of the Gulf Arab states and its manifest is in order for passage.

YOU CAN NEVER UNDERESTIMATE HOW MESSED UP HIGHER EDUCATION IS.

Indiana game theorist Eric Rasmusen, who has an academic reputation stronger than mine and a healthy contrarian streak, is back in the news.

Eric Rasmusen, a well-known professor of economics at Indiana University, recently said he was denied his application for emeritus status.

Rasmusen retired in 2021, but decided not to apply for emeritus status until last year when the university stopped offering free access to online journal subscriptions for faculty who were retired but not emeritus, Rasmusen wrote recently on his substack.

“If I continue to be denied access, I will accept that,” he told The College Fix in a recent interview. “It isn’t fair, but I can ask friends at Indiana University and elsewhere to look up scholarly articles if I need them.”

Typically, professors who retire in good status are awarded the title “emeritus,” but Rasmusen said he was not. He believes the answer to this question goes back to 2019 and a controversial social media post about men and IQ.

When asked if he has considered taking legal action, Rasmusen said he does not plan to.

Legal action might be less effective than letting Indiana's Militant Normal politicians do their thing, or right-populist influencers influence the mockery.

Rasmusen said he prefers the approach of publicity or “an appeal to their better nature.”

The College Fix also contacted Indiana University’s media relations office, Board of Trustees, and Faculty Council twice over the past two weeks, asking what the university policy is for granting emeritus status, if the timing of a request is typically a criterion in determination of emeritus status, and whether there is a process for appealing the decision, as well as about Rasmusen. None responded.

Meanwhile, National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood told The Fix that denial of emeritus status is uncommon because “conferring such status on a retiring professor is essentially costless.”

Wood said in a recent email that “the only reason to deny it” would be “the danger of reputational damage” such as “credible accusations of plagiarism, research fraud, rape, or other criminal felonies …”

“An argument might also be made that a college or university that is in the midst of attempting to raise its academic profile might want to withhold emeritus status from faculty who are conspicuously lacking in academic merit,” Wood said.

Rasmusen, however, has not faced such accusations nor, as he pointed out, is he lacking in academic prowess.

Peter Wood might be my favorite former academic administrator, but clearly he missed the switch in "reputational damage" including the criminal felony of challenging the woke dispensation.

I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING.

A few weeks ago, Wisconsin's women's hockey team secured yet another national championship.

The men's postseason aspirations were on life support.  The way things like strength of schedule and quality wins work, though, they were an at-large participant in the national tournament as an at-large team.  They rallied to oust Michigan State in overtime to reach the Frozen Four, and then played North Dakota Fighting Hawks.  There were fans in the stands rocking their Fighting Sioux gear: imagine Chicago Black Hawks sweaters, only in green.

Wisconsin had never defeated North Dakota in the national tournament.  Last Thursday, though, they did.

Twenty years ago, the women won a national championship and a few weeks later (I am not a fan of these long pauses in the hockey tournament while the basketball tournaments go on) the men also did.

The men's championship game featured Wisconsin playing Denver.  Denver had never defeated Wisconsin in the national tournament.  Last Saturday, though, they did.  Denver have eleven national titles, including three in the past five years.  Wisconsin men have six, the most recent being the 2006 win.

Wisconsin's sports information people looked on the bright side.  "The young team proved they’ll be a force to reckon with for years to come."  That might be, although they might want to study the advice Wisconsin's 2006 coach, Mike Eaves, offered.  "In a close game where you don't get rewarded with goals you have to be patiently persistent."  That was Denver, they didn't get many shots, but they didn't let Wisconsin's aggressive forechecking demoralize them either.

IRAN'S PAPER BLOCKADE.

Only last week, I asked, "Where is the fleet of Aegis carrying destroyers and cruisers to quarantine the Iranian ports?"  I got the answer I was hoping for on Saturday when two Arleigh Burkes sailed into the Strait of Hormuz, ignored Iranian requests to go away, and sailed out again.  In so doing, they made the case that Iran's closure of the strait was a paper blockade.  That's something the United States Navy understands well: there was a reason Gideon Welles rushed anything that would float to close secessionist ports in 1861: should some other naval power (meaning primarily Britain and France in those days) send a warship to make a port of call in Charleston or New Orleans, the rules of war (even without a transatlantic cable let alone radio) allowed that power to declare it was a blockade in name only, and interesting diplomatic or military things could follow.

WHAT IS THIS, JUNIOR HIGH?

I've long maintained that politics is the social dynamics of junior high with more at stake than who nails the homecoming queen.  In popular parlance, it's the cool kids facing off against the nerds, although, depending on where and when you served your time, it might have been grubs and kaleeges, greasers and freaks, jocks and theater kids, or preps and burnouts.  And politics is a place where people get to preen and display their luxury beliefs.

Now comes Thomas "Loopy" Friedman, longtime columnist for New York's Times, confirming all of it. “The problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings. They are both engaged in anti-democratic projects in their own countries. They’re both alleged crooks. They are terrible, terrible people doing terrible things to America’s standing in the world and Israel’s standing in the world. I really find myself torn. I want to see Iran militarily defeated, but I do not want to see these two terrible people strengthened."

WHAT PART OF "NO NUKES" DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

According to Jake Johnson with Common Dreams, "Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that the Trump administration’s representatives derailed marathon talks in Pakistan’s capital with maximalist demands, just as the two sides were 'inches away' from a preliminary agreement to end the six-week conflict."  Read on and discover the spin.  "Oman’s foreign minister, who mediated previous talks, said hours before the US and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28 that 'we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal.'"  Let us give due consideration to the possibility that something might have been lost in translation, but "substantial progress in the direction of a deal" sounds like the kind of phrasing that might come out of marriage counselling.  He and she are very much at odds over many things, and yet, both of them are in the same room, and maybe they've both agreed that they like puppies.

That's very much the stuff of peace-process liberalism, which produces "a lot of process and precious little peace."

GOOD BYE, ROCKY TOP.

At the beginning of the week, a championship team built on free agency.  At the end, a perennial championship contender gutted by free agency.  "Tennessee's women's basketball team no longer has a single returning player on its roster after Jaida Civil enters the transfer portal."

Seriously?

After a tumultuous season, Tennessee is now heading into next year without a single returner. In a statement on Instagram, freshman guard Jaida Civil — who was the only returning player left on the Lady Vols’ roster — announced that she will enter the transfer portal, joining the rest of her Tennessee teammates.

“This has been the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. After deep thought and prayer, I have decided to enter the transfer portal,” Civil said. “This isn’t goodbye — it’s gratitude. Tennessee will always be a part of me.”

In the statement, Civil shouted out Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell, whose second year as head coach has resulted in a mass exodus of her players.

“To play for one of the best up and coming coaches in the country has been a true blessing. Coach Kim — I want you to know how much I genuinely love and appreciate you,” Civil said. “The belief you had in me, the opportunity you gave me as a young woman trying to find her way — it changed my life. I will always carry that with me.”

You don't want to burn your bridges leaving, and yet the story suggests that moving on from Pat Summitt has not been easy.

Civil becomes the eighth Lady Vol to enter the transfer portal, joining starting guard Talaysia Cooper, freshman twins Mia and Mya Pauldo, senior Alyssa Latham, redshirt sophomore Kaniya Boyd and freshman guards Deniya Prawl and Lauren Hurst.

The other four players on Tennessee’s roster this season — Zee Spearman, Janiah Barker, Nya Robertson and Jersey Wolfenbarger — are graduating seniors, meaning Caldwell is now left with zero returning players for next year.

Caldwell also lost two other seniors during the season: Ruby Whitehorn, who Caldwell dismissed from the team in November after she was arrested for marijuana possession, and Kaiya Wynn, who left the team after not starting on Senior Day, saying in a statement that she had reached her “breaking point.”

Tennessee has two high school recruits who have signed with the program. One, five-star recruit Oliviyah Edwards, requested a release from her contract with Tennessee last week. The other, Gabby Minus, has not said anything on whether she will be rethinking her commitment.

How quickly the transfer portal and "contracts" have changed college sport.  Indiana as national  champion?  Tennessee's women's basketball in civil disorder?  What next, the top seeds in the men's college hockey tournament both watching the title game from the stands?

BLOCKADING HATTERAS INLET IS HARDER.

I allude, of course, to Gideon Welles's Anaconda Plan, which ultimately strangled the rebellion.  It took four years to implement, because getting control of the Mississippi River and the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico America wasn't easy.  Note how in four years, Vladimir Putin hasn't been able to do something similar with Ukraine.