FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Joanne Jacobs and Best of the Web note that reporter emerita Helen Thomas was present at Thursday's press conference, but she was not called on first. She was in fact not called on at all.

WHERE YOU LIVE. Semi-Daily Journal offers several different versions of a map showing how crowded your neighborhood is.

MUGGED BY REALITY? Communitarian sociologist and public intellectual Amitai Etzioni, who recently started a weblog, is mugged by reality in Davos.

RETHINKING INTRODUCTORY ECONOMICS. Found by SCSU Scholars. This story and the next deserve further discussion, and they will receive same by week's end. How nuts has it been? There hasn't been much time to lay track despite the time-out I took dealing with the 'Net glitch.

THE MAKING OF AN ECONOMIST. Atlantic Blog's story.

SERVICE RESTORED. Thanks to the Blogger technology support, the glitch I was seeing has gone away, as have the funny sports stories, although the links provided here still go to the funny stories. It's been a busy week at the office, and now a snowstorm arrives on the eve of a business trip. There will be more content offered toward the end of the week.

WHAT IN THE WORLD? Football coverage in March? A riot at the Metrodome? And then there's this. What's on the loose on the 'Net?

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER. Is something more sinister at work on the 'Net? Has the University server been hacked? The strange graphic is still up at the Cold Spring Shops main (I have notified Blogger) but the archives appear to be untouched. On the other hand, the Yahoo discussion groups are still frozen at the end of March 1, and I am opening old versions of sites that I know should be updated....

DIVISION OF LABOR. Tightly Wound has discovered a rather heated debate in the interactive section of the Chronicle of Higher Education. What's at stake? Maternity leave. What's her observation? Women Have Babies. And the laying of the keel, let alone the launching, is not as rigorously timed as a shipyard would be. The exchanges of opinion at the forum do rate a look. The grievances recited there do apply to other sorts of jobs as well. It's not only on campus that parents seek to get away in time to pick up their kids after day care or school, or to avoid traveling, or staying late or working weekends, and the campus is not the only workplace where those who perceive themselves as being imposed upon are grumbling. (It's not limited to the degreed professions, there is a railroading phenomenon called "playing the board" that enables experts at it to avoid some of the more obnoxious jobs or call times. No doubt people in other lines of work can offer their observations.) There is one feature of the campus workplace that is different, and has not yet come up on the forum. Is there any other line of business in which people can use living at a distance as an additional scheduling constraint? Nothing aggravates me quite so much as the committee member who complicates an already complicated (by teaching, conferences, other committees, parents' daycare trips) scheduling problem by pleading a commuting hardship.

SOMEBODY HAS BEEN FOOLING AROUND WITH BLOGGER. On a couple of reloads I saw somebody's Blackboard sketches rather than my postings. Developing ....

UNBOLT THE AULD MUG. Alinghi finishes about ten boat lengths ahead of New Zealand and the Cup has already been transfered to the Lake Geneva Yacht Club (Swiss version.)

SPARK UP THE BARBIE. The Ides of March are a particularly good time to do so.

RUNNING HOME. Alinghi leading by 42 seconds at windward mark.

INCENTIVE COMPATIBILITY. It's not good manners to refuse your host when he takes you at your word, notes Mean Mr. Mustard.

IT'S NOT A LASER. Second downwind rounding, commentators criticizing New Zealand for attempting to slew the boat around the mark. Another tacking duel coming?

ANOTHER MECHANICAL FAILURE. Team New Zealand broke the spinnaker pole gybing. They jettisoned it and will rig another. Not the kind of thing you want to have happen with the America's Cup on the line. Gary Jobson diagnoses it as a mechanical failure.

SAIL SELECTION MATTERS. Alinghi flies a symmetric spinnaker, New Zealand a larger asymmetric. Alinghi's choice appears to be more effective for the winds.

TACKING DUEL WORKS. New Zealand gains a boatlength on the second beat.

PEER REVIEW? Atlantic Blog collects a number of posts on the role of economic advisor to the President, with evidence of lots of pot-and-kettle accusations by the combatants.

DEFIES PARODY. Where Worlds Collide finds a proposal for a Communist theme park "complete with surly border guards, rigorous customs inspections, authentic East German mark notes, and restaurants with regulation bland East German food." I have encountered capitalist amusement parks with guards who trained at Penn Central, inspection of carry-in objects, scrip only good in the park, and dubious overpriced food. Some even go so far as to yell at you if you attempt to ride no-hands on their roller coasters.