THE B TRAIN ALSO STOPS AT HARLEM. Live from the Third Rail comments on Chicago Tribune columnist John Hilkevitch's "Getting Around" contemplating the possible restoration of skip-stop services on the Northwestern Elevated.

Ask yourself this: if you had the choice during a -5 degree morning, would you rather spend more time on an exposed elevated platform watching trains pass by, or do you want to be in a heated train, even if it does crawl down the tracks?

The proposal arises amidst plans to rehabilitate parts of the Northwestern (which the youngsters refer to as the "Brown Line" and the "Red Line") at the same time that the Dan Ryan median strip line is being rehabilitated and the Dan Ryan "Expressway" is receiving an overhaul that will take several years.

A reasonably healthy person can get to downtown Chicago from the North Side more quickly riding a bicycle than taking the Red Line, which often takes more than an hour.

"The service is just awful. I prefer to take my bike because I get to the Loop faster," said Richard Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association.

Reinstating skip-stop service would be easy "because the CTA was doing it before on basically the same track layout and it worked very well," Harnish said.

The problem, once again, is a failure to spend money expanding the road network, whether for lack of federal matching funds that are being sequestered to make the budget deficit look better or for fear of disrupting neighborhoods or calling out the greenie protestors is irrelevant. What matters is that yet again money is going to rebuild a major Chicago highway under traffic, rather than to providing additional capacity. The skip-stop service worked reasonably well when the Northwestern was through-routed with the South Side. Englewood branch trains made the A stops, and Jackson Park trains made the B stops.

The northerly portion of the Northwestern is ill-suited to skip-stop operation, the following quote notwithstanding.

Yet transit experts said the north segment of the Red Line--between Howard and some point north of Clark Junction--is the best location to restart skip-stop service and save commuters time. The stations are closely spaced, giving riders a choice of where to board depending on their destination.

Alternating train stops between nearby stations would also help deal with over-crowded rail platforms and trains during mornings and evenings, the experts say.

During the morning rush, all the seats usually are taken by the time southbound Red Line trains have traveled from the Howard Street terminal to the Loyola stop in Rogers Park. Everybody boarding south of that point must stuff themselves onto packed trains for the long ride downtown.

North of Clark Junction, where the Ravenswood branch diverges, the Clark-Howard-Linden-(Waukegan) was originally a two-track railroad with island stations. When it was quadrupled, the express tracks were laid outside the existing, local tracks, and new island platforms serving all tracks were built at Addison (for a baseball park), Sheridan, Wilson, Loyola, and Howard. Evanston Expresses and North Shore Line trains used the outside tracks. South of Clark Junction, however, the local tracks are the outer tracks, with platforms serving all four tracks at Belmont and Fullerton. (Evanston Expresses remain on the outer tracks and now call at all local stations south of Belmont.)

At one time, the elevated was four tracks from just north of Chicago Avenue to Armitage, the junction with the subway. The subway entrance uses the two inner tracks. Although trains may switch tracks at Armitage, the elevated becomes two tracks, with preferred routing on and off the outer tracks. The elevated also used to run a variety of express trains. If the current service fills up by the time trains reach Loyola, why not path a few trains onto the express tracks south of Loyola (trackage to permit this move used to be in place at Granville.) In like manner, have some trains turn at Loyola, making all stops to Wilson or Sheridan, and thence onto the express tracks. It's a somewhat more expensive proposition to replace the outer tracks south of Armitage (these have been out of service for over 40 years) but the notion of sending a few North Side trains around the loop and back to Wilson or Loyola or Addison occurred to the Rapid Transit management over 70 years ago.

NO BUYOUTS. The University of Buffalo football team has attracted notice from the alleged newspaper of record for its change of schedule so as to obtain larger guarantees from Capital One Bowl winner Wisconsin and Capital One Bowl loser Auburn. There is no such opportunity for conference games. Buffalo is the most recent addition to the Mid-American Conference, and their schedule included a visit to DeKalb for a Saturday evening game.

It was a pleasantly warm afternoon suitable for tailgating and photography. Happy hour ban or no, a local tavern set up a beer garden on the east end of the tailgating area. There is a rather intense game of beanbag in progress.

Everywhere I went, I saw people playing beanbag.


Although these cars are parked in the "tailgating" area, this was not the only "cartopping" I saw in progress. The proportion of tailgating students to older adults is higher at Northern Illinois than it was at Wisconsin. Perhaps some of the people in this picture will be back to meet up with their second-generation-at-Northern kids in another 25 years. (Or will they meet up with their kids in Madison? I hope they give their eight-year-olds enough free time to organize their own beanbag games at that age.)


The marching band finishes its pregame concert.


The new locker room is taking shape north of the north end zone.


No Godzillatron here, just our scoreboard, and our artillery piece. Had Buffalo played at West Virginia, they would have encountered the Mountaineer, somebody in a Dan'l Boone outfit wielding a flintlock from the French and Indian War that the University of Wisconsin didn't want him to bring into Camp Randall. Here, we have a more substantial field piece, and we do fire a salute after each touchdown. In the background are some trees with a view into the stadium that some fans climbed during the 2003 BCS run to see what was going on inside.


From the west stands, there is a view of the east side of DeKalb. The headlights of westbound trains shine at the stadium as they pass under the old coal dock (gray structure above the M-N sign.) (Sunday update: this is a digital zoom shot with a headlight. The train is about to cross 7^th Street.)


The band reminds the student section where they are. (They also spelled it out for us. Many bands play to the press-box side only.)


On a warm evening, the body painted torsos aren't at risk of frostbite. I understand some of these fans were out when the Gales of November came early.


Yes, there was a game. On the second Northern Illinois play from scrimmage, Garrett Wolfe went 49 yards for a touchdown.


After a Buffalo three-and-out, a Northern touchdown on a reverse was reversed by a penalty, but a few plays later Northern was in the end zone again. We have Siberian Huskies on the field after each score.


The announcers for the student radio station had a nice view from the flying bridge. I hope they have quarters indoors once the Gales of November come.


At halftime, Northern 17, Buffalo 0; Buffalo unable to get a field goal attempt off as time expires thanks to mismanagement of their times out. Halftime of evening games is for fireworks.


The attendance is now a matter of public record. Most seats were occupied.

Northern fielded a punt with just over 4 minutes to play and broke another touchdown run. Buffalo answered with a touchdown near the end of the game, but Northern's special teams blocked the kick. Huskies 31, Bulls 13, the Black Bavarian tastes good.

In other games of interest, Wisconsin 14, San Diego State 0.

RAILROAD ARCHAEOLOGY TO DO. I've located a website with photos of surviving railroad stations, including a number of intriguing finds in Northern Illinois. Consider first the Rockford and Interurban. It quit business in 1930, but the stations in Cherry Valley, Winnebago, and Pecatonica still stand. More roadtrips to the North West Frontier are in order. Also still standing is the Hoopole station of the improbably named Hoopole Yorktown and Tampico (the last named being the birthplace of one Ronald Wilson Reagan.) According to Hilton and Due, the HY&T was originally projected as an interurban called the Dixon Rock Falls and Southeastern, but, like the Woodstock & Sycamore it was never electrified, although, unlike the W&S it remained in operation until 1954. Further afield, the latest issue of First and Fastest alerts me to a property called the Macomb Industry & Littleton, which was also conceived as an interurban, although it was never electrified, and it escaped the attention of Hilton and Due.

PEREGRINUS EXPECTAVI PEDES MEOS IN CYMBALIS.

It is difficult to conceive of there being a Star Wars series without Sergei Eisenstein's Aleksandr Nevsky, in which the Order of Teutonic Knights play the part of a real-life Evil Empire that is stymied by a plucky if less well-equipped Russian army, and the Force assists by causing the ice to give way at the right time, all to a Prokofiev score.

The Teutonic Knights were, along with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and the Knights Templar, the last-named alleged in a recent best-seller to be protecting a secret that could shake the foundations of Christianity, the principal Crusader orders. Most of the Teutonic Order's crusading, however, took place in the lands east of the Elbe. They had some successes. A Prussian, after all, is a Pole with a von in front of his surname, e.g. von Blaskowitz, von Czudnochowski. They also had their failures. Their defeat by Aleksandr Nevsky at Lake Peipus in April 1242 ended their aspirations in Russia. Eight score years later, their ambitions in Poland and Lithuania were checked near Willenberg. That story provides the first part of Geoffrey Evans's Tannenberg 1410/1914, which is Book Review No. 32. Poland's King Wladislaw Jagiello, in alliance with Lithuania's Grand Duke Witold, managed to out-maneuver and surround a better-equipped army of Teutonic Knights.

Five hundred years later, a large Russian force moved against Germany's eastern border as a real threat against Berlin as well as to distract German efforts against Belgium and France. In the ensuing battle of Tannenberg, German commanders were able to make more effective use of captured Russian movement orders than, say, General McClellan was able to make at Antietam. The Russians suffered from poor command and control, rivalries between the army commanders, and poorer equipment than the Germans. A Russian army was surrounded and captured, and General Aleksandr Samsonov took his own life not far from Willenberg.

The Russian efforts were not completely in vain, as the Germans diverted forces intended to complete the Schlieffen Plan in the west to reinforce East Prussia. Author Evans argues that the subsequent Russian collapse, however, rendered Russia ineffective as an ally (that without any speculation about revolution) as well as freeing additional German troops for the war of attrition that ensued on the Western Front.

Adolf Hitler was instrumental in destroying two battle monuments. An equestrian statue of King Jagiello commissioned by Polish prime minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski in Krakow on the 500th anniversary of the defeat of the Knights was destroyed early in the German occupation in 1939. The Poles built a replacement and dedicated it in 1976. The German war memorial at Tannenberg, which became German commanding general, later Reich President Paul von Hindenburg's tomb, was destroyed with Hindenburg's body relocated to Berlin as the Red Army closed in in 1945.

Why this book review, and my focus on Willenberg? A relative recently located, concealed in a dresser drawer, a baptismal record of my great-grandfather in the Evangelical Church of Willenberg. Willenberg is currently Wielbark, Poland. The Evangelical Church still stands.


That appears to be a Lutheran rooster on the steeple, consistent with the official seal of the church on the certificate. One version of the family's migration from Prussia to Volhynia to Wisconsin is that they were offered land grants in Volhynia that included exemptions from the military draft, and they left for the States when word that the Tsar was considering ending the exemptions. Another version has the East Prussians in Volhynia leaving as a reaction to a Russification campaign as Aleksandr III cracked down on liberal elements generally. Whatever the story, they did leave, by 1905. But the records that have come into my possession suggest that my grand-uncle Jan may have been born in Willenberg. He was conscripted into the Allied Expeditionary Force and killed in action in France, possibly by an East Prussian.

THE FAREWELL TOUR BEGINS. The Vermeer Quartet offered their first recital of the 2006-2007 season. They began with Schubert's E-flat, Op. 125, no. 1, which despite being published posthumously is a teenage work for a family jam session. Well done. They finished with the Mendelssohn e, Op. 44 no. 2, a cheerful way to go home.

Inbetween, Shostakovich's No. 8, op. 110, a musical evocation of an evil empire. The program notes suggest that Shostakovich was contemplating taking his own life when he wrote this, during a three-day visit to Dresden shortly after he "caved into heavy government pressure to join the Communist Party." Nobody can write agitated and tortured passages quite like Shostakovich, and he captures the MVD at the door in three notes.

ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS, INDEED. At Blogs for Industry, Jim Hu has been following the Gabrielle Stryker tenure case with the expertise of a practitioner both of a related discipline and of successful grantsmanship.

I'm curious about how the Provost could not have any preconceptions about a junior member of his former department whose interim review (most places do these at year 3 or so, when tenure decisions are looming but it's not too late to address possible weaknesses in the record) must have crossed his desk.

The information that the Department headship changed during this period is also interesting. This means that neither of the past two department heads was a full Professor (actually three; from what I can tell, Dr. Stryker had at least four department heads during her time at Oakland)...which is not an indicator of departmental strength. The Dean mentioned above is also not the current dean. The acting dean is the Associate Provost.

Is anybody in charge at Oakland?

He also links to an Oakland University AAUP site that includes Professor Stryker's external letters. One is perfunctory but favorable.

Dr. Stryker's recent work on computer and mathematical modeling of T. cruzi transmission provides pioneer information regarding the devastating effects of interruption of vector control programs that are likely to happen in developing countries. I am optimistic that publication of her recent articles and continued work will open the new research funding sources and Dr. Stryker would continue to work towards the vaccine development against T. cruzi.

A second concentrates on a different part of her research and reaches a similar conclusion.

Overall, I think it is fair to say that Dr. Stryker got off to an awkward start in her research and was probably working in too many different areas. However, she has now focused on a very important area and is achieving a high level of success in an important field with ample potential for years to come. I am particularly impressed that she has sought out multiple important collaborations that appear to be productive alliances. In today's funding climate, this is an important strategic move that will insure [c.q.] future success in grant applications. For these reasons, I enthusiastically support promotion of Dr. Gabrielle Stryker to the rank of associate professor with tenure.

The third letter is somewhat more negative, including a damning-with-faint-praise passage that often turns up in such evaluations.

Thus, Dr. Stryker would not appear to be a strong candidate for my institution. However, this does not say that she would meet the requirements at Oakland.

Come off it. We ask for external reviews all the time. The reviewer's department may or may not have had the opportunity to consider the candidate's dossier in some previous search. That the candidate never submitted an application to the reviewer's department, or that the department ruled out the candidate for their own short-list, or would not make the cut at the reviewer's department, does not strike me as useful information. (The alternative strategy, to suggest that the candidate might be attractive to other institutions, is equally irrelevant. By definition faculty without tenure are on the job market all the time.)

HOW OTHERS SEE US. Villainous Company reads a Reason Foundation working paper, reprinting work in Journal of Labor Research, suggesting that moderate drinking augments human capital, leading to higher earnings.

The survey question on alcohol asks respondents, “Do you ever have occasion to use any alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine, or beer, or are you a total abstainer?” From this question we create a dummy variable where drinkers have a one and abstainers have a zero. The survey also asks respondents the frequency with which they go to a bar or tavern. Choices include the following: almost every day, once or twice a week, several times per month, about once per month, several times a year, about once a year, never, and don’t know. From this question we create a variable indicating whether an individual frequents a bar or tavern at least once per month. This somewhat crude measure attempts to capture whether one drinks in social or nonsocial settings.

We therefore estimate the following equation:

Yi = ?Xi+ ?Ai + ?Bi + ?I , (1)

[THUD]

...where Y is the log of real earned income by individual i; X is a vector of personal and demographic characteristics; A is the drinking dummy variable; and B is the social vs. nonsocial drinking dummy variable.

A commenter grumbles that it's "sloppy econometrics."

The excerpt continues

Control variables in X include race, age, age squared, religion, schooling, marital status, parental education, number of siblings, and region of residence.

*sigh*

I'm inclined to agree. In many cases these "control" variables give the response functions different intercepts but the same slope: there is no way of establishing whether a Protestant who bar-hops (an interaction term) would do better than an agnostic who is a regular at some bar.

FIRST SPELL OUT THE PAYOFF FUNCTIONS AND THE PROBABILITIES. At Voluntary Xchange, some thoughts about the effectiveness of fighting terrorists.

This is, that if an act of terror is one-time-thing, then there isn't much sense in fighting it. Alternatively, if terror is part of a pattern, then it does make sense to fight it.

However, if there is a pattern, and you do fight it, there are two possibilities. First, you might be unsuccessful and give up.

Alternatively, you might be successful, and reduce terrorism to something that looks like a one-time-thing ... again meaning there isn't much sense in fighting it.

But ... of course ... there is the reasonable position that not opposing terrorism further encourages terrorists.

So, what we have is that the absence of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 is both evidence of success in the war on terror, and evidence that the money has been wasted, depending on your perspective. Both are justifications for reducing our efforts and probably increasing the probability of future attacks.

Game theorists will recognize this as a game without an equilibrium.

It's worse than that. We can't be sure what game is being played. First, let's spell out what the "one-time thing" is. Was the September 11 raid truly a one-off? The hawks have a long list of attacks on American interests overseas (Beirut, Khobar Towers, Nairobi, USS Cole as well as the February 1993 truck bombing in the Trade Center parking deck.) The pacifists will suggest that each of those is a reaction to an American mis-step (tilting toward Israel, garrisoning Saudi Arabia, maintaining sanctions against Iraq.) What history is present in order for the September 11 raid to be interpreted as a signal, and what subjective probability (the hawk's or the pacifist's) is being updated by that signal?

Now, consider the response. Here, there's a possible parallel with the chain-store paradox. Viewed as a one-shot game, the best strategy for an incumbent store is to acquiesce in the entry of another store, as it loses less by acquiescing than it does by fighting. But if it doesn't know how many stores might enter, it loses less by fighting and acquiring a reputation for being crazy. Thus, whether or not there was a second attack in the works, the vigorous response to the first attack establishes the reputation: don't do this. (That a scared entrant might take on a different store, or that terrorist cells might move their activities to England or Spain is an extension of the chain-store model.)

But we don't know what information content rests in the end of Saddam Hussein's funding of human bombs in Israel or Colonel Qadafi's willingness to open his weapons labs to international inspection or Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in custody and talking, or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in custody and talking, or what probabilities are being updated on the basis of those signals.

THE RECRIMINATIONS BEGIN. Give Coach Novak credit.

We got whipped. We got whipped good," said NIU coach Joe Novak. "I thought we got out-coached. We didn't tackle well enough, we didn't cover well enough, didn't protect well enough, didn't catch well enough. They executed better and we didn't tackle worth a darn."

Straight out of the Epistle of St. Vincent to the Cheeseheads.

In other sports news, the cost overruns continue at the posh locker room.

Construction of the Academic and Athletic Performance Center recently began north of Huskie Stadium. Paid for strictly through private funding, the building was originally priced at $9.5 million, and then bumped to $12 million.

But for those of you who didn’t read media relations’ Tuesday press release for NIU’s football game against Ohio, the price of the AAPC was listed at $14.5 million. Athletics Director Jim Phillips said the price was a misprint and believes the building will end up at around $12 million. Let’s hope so. — Sean Connor, sports reporter.

(I grabbed this from a .pdf page image of the September 11 edition.)

INEFFICIENTLY MUCH OF THE WRONG KIND OF EDUCATION? Greg Mankiw reacts to a David Brooks column proposing more public money for the common schools. (The column is behind the Times Select wall.) He recommends readers understand the arguments in Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? and points to an instructive review. Let me highlight a paragraph of the review.

Reviewing specific programs, Carneiro and Heckman find that preschool education is highly effective, although with more impact on noncognitive than cognitive abilities. Schools are much less productive, and returns are low to increased investments in K-12 education in the form of higher salaries, smaller classes, and so forth. They suggest that structural changes that increase school choice and competition should have higher returns, but are careful to note that returns to increased investment in schools are limited by what families contribute to the production process. They also conclude that added investments in job training and higher education have low rates of return, particularly for lower ability adolescents and adults.

That's a polite way of suggesting the focus on curriculum is misplaced and that inculcating the Habits of Highly Effective People might be more productive.

To some extent, my sparring partner at Anonymous Community agrees.

One of my bloggy sparring partners likes to say that the natural check on colleges' impulse to lower standards is employers' unwillingness to hire graduates with weak skills. I've seen remarkably little evidence of that – from what I've seen, the business climate at any given moment has a far greater impact on the rate of hiring than do graduates' writing skills, particularly for entry-level positions – but I will grant that employers prefer people who can be counted on to show up for work. If we teach by example that deadlines are meant to be broken, we're not doing anybody any good. Telling a kid he can't get into class two weeks late is also teaching, in its way.

Tough love, amen.

The review considers a number of other possibilities but does not rule tough love out.

Carneiro and Heckman note some exceptions to their general thesis. They find short-term credit constraints limit college attendance for up to eight percent of the population. Financial programs targeting these families could pay off. School-based interventions with adolescents still enrolled (but not dropouts) have substantial impacts, particularly on noncognitive skills. Private job training has a relatively high rate of return but does not reduce (and may increase) inequality. Public policies providing training in the classroom have high rates of return, though other public job training programs do not.

The exceptions are taken to prove the rule, because they are relevant to so few people and have such small impacts on inequality. Carneiro and Heckman conclude (123): “the ability that is decisive in producing schooling differentials is shaped early in life. If we are to substantially eliminate ethnic and income differentials in schooling, we must start early.” Thus, a “serious reformulation of human capital policy is needed.” Yet, even with the benefit of a response and rejoinder, the reader is left with only hints as to what this might entail beyond rejection of most current policies and movement toward choice, competition, and local incentives in schools. Most intriguing are their statements that emphasize early family policy (135): “Good families promote cognitive, social, and behavioral skills. Bad families do not. The relevant policy issue is to determine what interventions in bad families are successful.”

Challenging task, that. By what standard can policymakers regulate the behavior of "bad families" without making the case for requiring bicycle helmets or banning pate? (Policymakers haven't yet figured out that properly timed traffic lights are a cost-effective way of taming speeding, reducing gasoline use, and damping road rage.)

OUR NEIGHBORS AT WAR. 52-year-old Waukesha soldier killed in Afghanistan.

Sgt. 1st Class Merideth Howard died when a car bomber slammed into a Humvee carrying 15 people, killing her and one other person, according to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times newspaper in Texas.

Howard, a Corpus Christi native, joined the Army Reserves in 1988 and went to Afghanistan in April, said her husband, Hugh Hvolboll.

She was a member of the 364th Civil Affairs Brigade in support of the 10th Mountain Division.

Howard was a firefighter before she began a career as a fire-safety consultant out of their Waukesha home.

TO REMEMBER. Others have done a fine job of rounding up perspectives on the surprise attack and developments in the intervening years. See Joe Katzman's omnibus post at Winds of Change as well as his fears of what is to come. James Joyner has a roundup Outside the Beltway, and National Review has an instructive symposium.

Andrew Sullivan's No Surrender best sets the theme he chose, which was "We're still here, get used to it." But perhaps the best evidence that we are prevailing came on Labor Day. Australian naturalist Steve Irwin had a fatal encounter with a stingray. Labor Day is the traditional start of the campaign season, and the television talk shows will spare some time for stock-taking and ankle-biting. Not that Monday. Perhaps Mr Bin Laden is making the wrong kind of videos. A wrestling match with a Siberian tiger, now that I'd want to see.

AS IT HAPPENED. Five years ago, I was up and about early to have an oil change and routine maintenance on my car. It wasn't until I had paid for the service and started my car that I had any inkling of what was going on on the East Coast.

As part of its commemorative coverage, CNN made available a real-time replay of its morning news show commencing at 8:30 am (Eastern.) Celebrity maternity wear, earnings prospects at Nokia, all of a sudden a cut to "disturbing video."

The first person the network reached in New York was their vice president of finance, Sean Murtagh, who observed the first plane from his office, which I believe is upstairs at Penn Station. He described the plane as a "twin engine passenger jet, possibly a 737," and he noted that the pilot was having what he interpreted as control troubles, with the wings rocking. Not bad for seeing something that didn't look right without any inkling of what was to happen, and consistent with an inexperienced pilot flying too low and fast for conditions.

The newscast repeatedly shows the second plane approaching the south tower, but it's obscured behind the north tower just before impact. Newscasters surmise that the jet is "another 737" and their first instinct is that something's wrong with the navigation system???

I suspect observers initially characterized both jets as 737s rather than the larger transoceanic twin-jets because they didn't realize how big the towers were.

THE WRONG KIND OF RECOGNITION. Oakland University provost Virinder Mougdil, whose veto of a tenure recommendation for biologist Gabrielle Stryker has been noticed at Inside Higher Education, is the object of a nationwide search by Margaret Soltan at University Diaries, who would like to have a conversation with him.

Mr Mougdil is precisely the kind of administrator I had in mind when I wrote,

The executive suites at numerous universities are occupied by individuals who, if the word got out, would have to hide in spider holes rather than sip sherry in panelled common rooms. Clearly, what we lack is a proper card deck.

The last full report on the card deck is rather old. Although I have added a few names since then, and there are only 32 cards to fill on a sheepshead deck, as it's still fitting to use a complicated game that you don't play with a full deck here, there is room for Mr Mougdil somewhere in the deck, and the headhunting firm of Schneider u. Schwarz is at work finding a proper placement for the arbitrary and capricious Virinder Mougdil. Professor Soltan has not disclosed a reward for winkling him out.

THIS IS SO SEPTEMBER 10. S.A. provides bus to take students to city council meeting. Not to protest university complicity in the war effort or to investigate potential diversion of city funds to infrastructure improvements under the locker room.

In an effort to sway DeKalb City Council members from effectively eliminating 50-cent draft nights, the "Save My Beer Bus" will begin loading passengers at the Holmes Student Center.

Adam Novotney, Student Association president, is leading students against the proposed ordinance to raise the minimum price of alcohol. The SA will provide a bus to take students who oppose the legislation to today's city council meeting.

The bus will begin picking up students at the Holmes Student Center at 6 p.m. and make its way to each of the residence halls. The bus will also bring students back after the meeting using the same route. The city council meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

The only part of this more frivolous than the protest itself is the denial that it's a protest.

Novotney said the trip to the DeKalb Municipal Building is not a protest. He said the reason he wants to bring so many students to the city council meeting is to get his argument across and show how many students disagree with the ordinance.

"Some say it's not important. Should they be able to do this without asking the student body, what could happen next?" Novotney said.

Come off it. The essence of protest is to peaceably assemble for the redress of grievances, even over whether the public interest is served by legislating minimum prices at taverns.

The protest failed, both symbolically and substantively.

As the bus went to Grant and Stevenson, students stood bewildered when they saw a bus and were told it was not a Campus Circle Left bus.

After Stevenson, the bus made some unscheduled stops. In an attempt to gather more students, it made rounds to three local bars.

SA president Adam Novotney and other students went to each bar trying to coax people to attend the meeting.

At Molly's Eatery and Drinkery, 1022 W. Lincoln Highway, Novotney began asking people to join him on the bus and then told them some reasons to oppose the "Happy Hour Prohibited" ordinance.

"We don't like paying more for beer," Novotney said to a couple of patrons in Molly's.

One of them agreed. "We don't like that either," said Molly's patron Adam Willig. "I'm all for cheap drinks; I love it out here."

At Otto's, 118 E. Lincoln Highway, Novotney even offered to pay for a group's drinks if they got on the bus.

A few true believers made it to the council meeting.

The preliminary hearing before the council went longer than planned while students waiting outside were scolded by city attorney Norma Guess for being too loud.

The minimum price ordinance passed.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Michael Ledeen is angry.

But many of our opposition leaders, journalists, broadcasters, and editors, and, apparently, the overwhelming majority of the professoriate, clearly have. Otherwise it would not be possible for them to actively undermine the war. It is wrong to say they have forgotten the significance of 9/11, because they never grasped it. For them, patriotism has always been unworthy of sophisticates like themselves, and fighting enemies on foreign battlefields is something that rubes and rednecks do. They understand neither the world nor their fellow countrymen. They think we can achieve peace by being nice–did you hear Senator Biden prattling on and on about the need to talk to our Iranian enemies?—and they don’t know that our commissioned officers are college graduates, many of them from the best universities. I doubt more than a small fraction of leading journalists know that you need a college degree to get a Marine commission. Their ignorance about, and contempt for our military, fester beneath the surface of their reportage.

How I wish Barbara Olson had the chance to confront them, live and in color. She knew them well, these self-satisfied, self-indulgent ignoramuses whose misunderstanding of the world was acquired at overpriced universities and at elegant dinner tables where they dined with like-minded people. How she would have ridiculed them and their alma maters, the Harvards, Georgetowns, Virginias and Chicagos who have just given their stages to Mohammed Khatami, the mass murderer who is pimping for the evil regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

She would not restrict her acid wit to those schools. She would also direct it at an administration that has failed so miserably to explain the urgency we need to destroy her murderers. She would surely demand an accounting from all those who signed off on Khatami’s visa. How could you? she would ask. You know–you say all the time–that Iran is the greatest supporter of the terrorists. You know–everybody knows–that the villains who organized my murder found sanctuary and support in Iran when they slinked out of Afghanistan. How could you then open our country to its former president? Have you no shame?

Go. Read. Discuss.

IN PRAISE OF EMERGENCE? Betsy Newmark, latter-day Baby Boomer, lays some smack on David Broder, the Face of Silent Generation Indecisiveness. First Mr Broder.

It is not that Americans have lost their self-reliance, he said, or their willingness to help their neighbors. But the bigger institutions on which they once thought they could rely -- the government, their employers, their unions -- are now either unreliable or entirely absent. When federal, state and local officials left the victims of Hurricane Katrina stranded in their flooded homes for days, it symbolized a fundamental breach of trust. When giants such as General Motors and Ford laid off thousands of workers while other companies walked away from the pensions they had promised retirees, it removed another prop to confidence. And when unions increasingly lost their ability to organize and represent workers, the sense of isolation became even stronger.

Now Ms Newmark.

People may indeed feel that large institutions are not as strong as they once were, but I'd argue that if people ever had a sense of security based on the power and competence of large corporations, government, or unions, they were deluding themselves and it might be a good thing that people are not placing their faith in large bureaucracies with their own agendas. The people who escaped Katrina did so because of their own initiative and not because of the government. That's a lesson we should all benefit from remembering.

Indeed. Is Mr Broder that nostalgic for the Old New Industrial State, or has he forgotten the mostly self-organized powerboat evacuation of Downtown Manhattan's stranded office workers on a sunny afternoon five years ago?

Law professor Kenneth Anderson's daughter is, if anything, even more skeptical of Wise Experts.

"Liberals," she said, presumably referring to her endlessly politically correct private school (the same National Cathedral that hosted ex-president Khatami last week), "always want to tell you what to do and what to think, but then they don't even keep you safe."

Democratic Party politicians might want to reflect on that awhile. They think of themselves as defenders of freedom, protectors of civil liberties. To my daughter, however, they are merely authoritarians who tell you what to think, but then, when push comes to shove, these liberal authoritarians don't even protect you from existential risk. In my thirteen year old child's political imagination, smoke from the burning Pentagon and the wreckage of the plane continues to rise. Does it in yours? Does it in theirs?

Ah but how many geese were noodled for the pate that was probably served at at least one function for Herr Khatami? There is a risk-assessment problem here: are you more likely to die of overeating than of terrorism? Harder question: are the food-preparation methods of fancy restaurants and caterers so affected by a public interest as to merit a ban? Harder question still: How many conventions of international law and due process apply to people who choose to operate outside the constraints of a state actor?

TO THE NORTHWEST FRONTIER. The Black Hawk War of 1832 merits further study. Today's post is a discovery I made while on a quest of a different kind. On the outskirts of Elizabeth, Illinois, not far from the grade of the Chicago Great Western Railroad, is the Apple River Fort.

The original fort was put together in a big hurry after word reached settlers in the area of the defeat of Stillman's Regiment to the southeast. The settlers quickly built a stockade around a cabin. The reconstruction includes manufactured goods characteristic of the early 1830s, although I suspect there is a bit more stuff in here than a mining family would have owned. (Nearby Galena is named for a lead-bearing ore, and Wisconsin's original Badgers were lead miners, not predatory mammals.)


The stockade included this fortified barracks building. The officers' quarters are on the ground floor, and 20 enlisted men slept upstairs.


This elevated firing point is aligned in the general direction of Stillman Valley.


The Black Hawk War is instructive in a number of ways. It could have been avoided. The U.S. government had a dispute with the Sauk tribe over who had the right to grow corn east of the Mississippi River. I'll have to do some more reading on this dimension of the story. At least twice during the war, U.S. regulars or Illinois militia fired on Sauk parties displaying a flag of truce. The U.S. government entered into alliances of convenience with inter alia the Winnebago and Sioux tribes who had disagreements of their own with the Sauk (are our counterinsurgency specialists studying these records?) Although in the State Line, Abraham Lincoln is the most frequently mentioned Distinguished Person to have fought in the campaign, you might recognize Jefferson Davis, Winfield Scott, and Zachary Taylor, who also participated.

The fort did what it was intended to do. Black Hawk's unit attacked with superior numbers, but the women inside, several of whom were named Elizabeth, assisted the men by reloading spare muskets and casting shot. (We're talking about nineteenth-century flintlock muzzle-loaders.) The defenders were able to maintain a firing rate that persuaded Black Hawk his unit was attacking a much larger force, and he broke off the attack to pilfer foodstuffs from the cabins outside the stockade.

The original fort was dismantled shortly after the campaign ended near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. This reconstruction dates to the late 1990s, based on archaeological exploration of the fort site.

CLANG, CLANG, CLANG GO MORE TROLLEYS. The Economist hails the tram. (Via Live from the Third Rail.)

Many of the original streetcars and interurbans were projects financed by the power companies. There's a new source of subsidy unlikely to be enthralled by a trolley mania.

Light rail is hugely expensive. The federal government can cover 80% of the cost, but it is so deluged with applications that 50% is more typical. On the local level, higher taxes are always a hard sell—and several municipal governments are often involved, which complicates matters. A much-advertised benefit of light rail is that it sparks economic development around stations. At first, though, as is happening in Houston now, householders can delay projects out of fear that their property will fall victim to the bulldozers.

Cost overruns have already caused trouble in Seattle, which had to budget in an extra $1 billion several years ago. The city's financial storm has calmed, and Sound Transit expects to complete a light-rail link to the airport by 2009. Now, though, planners across America must worry about a huge jump in the price of construction materials. Concrete for tunnels, barriers and supports costs around 11% more than last year. Prices of steel, cement and copper wiring have gone up too.

Buses are cheaper, and can make use of the road network (that is, when the government is funding expansion of the road network.) But the city bus, and its intercity cousin, are canonical inferior goods.

Can cities get by with buses, which are far cheaper than rail? Sadly, few people want to ride on buses unless they have to. In many American cities they are the transport of the poor, the drunk and the illegal. They are slow and often smelly, and come at unpredictable intervals. And when they stop, they may block traffic.

But petrol prices are having an effect. Buses have seen some astonishing growth, especially in smaller cities, notes William Millar, the president of [the American Public Transit Association].

I'm not persuaded, however, that the wireless internet access on the streetcar light rail vehicle the article touts will be enough to take away its disadvantage in making multi-purpose trips. (That disadvantage can be mitigated but not eliminated by better connections and generous transfer privileges. "Punch mine a little long as I have a lot to buy down by Schuster's.")

THE LAWYERING BEGINS. At Blogs for Industry, an update on a tenure denial at Oakland including a notice of grievance by the AAUP. Oakland faculty are covered by a collective-bargaining agreement with the AAUP. Wayne State was also under such an agreement when I was there.

The Oakland AAUP note the possibility that departments have in fact been lax in properly mentoring tenure-track faculty and documenting their progress.

The administration’s responses to date for all three tenure grievances have raised several serious issues that will need to be addressed during bargaining next summer. For the two current grievances these responses contained a sentence that should be immediately brought to the attention of all current candidates for reappointment and tenure. In both cases the administration claims it is the andidate’s “responsibility to develop and fully complete” the review dossier and that both “did not contain sufficient evidence that … had satisfied the (unit) criteria.” These statements could be read to say that perhaps the candidate had met the criteria but that this could not be established from material presented in the dossier. It is worth repeating that it is the candidate’s responsibility to prepare the strongest possible dossier to document fulfillment of all criteria. An academic unit that fails to assist a candidate in preparing such a dossier is either intentionally or unintentionally undercutting their colleague’s chances for a positive review.

Whether those criteria are properly stated or not, there's something wrong if a department and a college review committee can both recommend a candidate for promotion and tenure with little or no dissent only to have a case overturned for lack of documentation.