GOT TOO MANY BOOKS? Tunku Varadarajan contemplates that possibility.

I stood in my office, beside my wall of books, and sifted as gold-miners do: looking for what to keep and what to throw over my shoulder. Gold is a good measure in these things, for unless one sets standards ruthlessly, one can be distracted easily from the truths of onward movement. "Why did I want that book in the first place?" and "Can I live without that book?" are my tests--my cyanide solution to separate the aureate book from the dispensable.

Take "Industrial Landscapes," a big book of ghostly and quite affecting pictures of abandoned factories in the Ruhr Valley. Did I really need to bear that home with me? Or that new hardback novel by a "gifted, deft and luminous" (I quote from the blurb on the dust jacket) Trinidadian writer--must I keep it? Or that Bantam Classic edition of "Leaves of Grass." It's a handy size for subway reading, but don't I already have about eight different editions of the Whitman at home, not counting Complete Works, etc.?

Landscapes, si, the rest no!

Mr Varadarajan's problem is a problem that confronts people who are changing jobs or adjusting the size of the nest now that the kids are on their own or preparing to move to assisted living or contemplating such a move for a parent. For Book Review No. 1 of 2007 (the challenge is up and running, we'll see how I do on this year's half ton) I recommend Scaling Down: Living Large in a Smaller Space. In some ways doing a review of a self-help book (and one could easily clutter one's house with the ouvre of the clutter counselors) is to take the challenge lightly. I'll defend my choice of this first review by noting this book is different. Everybody writing the clutter-busting advice has the usual stuff about bring less stuff in and turf more stuff out. This book offers more concrete suggestions about culling stuff of sentimental value, thinning collections, compromising with spouses, and respecting the continuity carefully selected stuff can provide to a life that's otherwise being disrupted. Its advice is particularly useful for people in the sandwich generation who might have aging parents to move to smaller quarters or adult children less likely to be returning to the large house.

THINKING ABOUT TAILGATING.

Yes, now. On occasion, I will fire up the cooker even in the middle of winter (although my preference is for a sunny weekend day so as to get everything cooked before sunset.) Onetime storefront operation Johnsonville has recently put on offer frozen, precooked, microwaveable bratwurst complete with what look like grill marks. They're a substantial advance over the TV Dinner.


And thinking about bratwursts and sailing season and other summer things gives occasion to recommend a few other bratwurst-related posts. Sean Hackbarth's American Mind investigates bratwurst in Washington, D.C? Yes, and some good ones.

So imagine my surprise to see the lowly bratwurst on the menu of the Blue Duck Tavern in Washington's Park Hyatt (1201 24th St. NW). I had to order it -- and I was even more surprised when I tried it. The Blue Duck Tavern's handmade bratwurst is served over sauerkraut braised in beer and white wine that would make a sauerkraut lover out of the most sauerkraut-hating soul. But the pièce de résistance is the bratwurst itself -- delicately seasoned, cooked perfectly and melt-in-your-mouth good.
I was convinced. There was such a thing as a well-made bratwurst on the East Coast. Perhaps there were other restaurants in the D.C. area serving good or at least acceptable bratwurst. I began searching for more surprises and found several places offering a taste of home. Café Berlin (322 Massachusetts Ave. NE), close enough to Capitol Hill for a lunchtime stop, serves a tasty and affordable bratwurst with German potato salad.
On the other side of town, Leopold's Kafe & Konditorei (3315 M St. NW) offers a crunchy-on-the-outside, meaty-on-the-inside bratwurst along with other classic Austrian dishes. And if you're looking for that oompah German feel in a dining experience, Old Europe (2434 Wisconsin Ave. NW), founded in 1948 and the granddaddy of D.C.'s German restaurants, offers an acceptable bratwurst and sauerkraut.
But for an experience that takes you back to Wisconsin, hop in your car and head to Jessup, Md. The dark-paneled dance hall of Blob's Park (8024 Blob's Park Road) has the feel of a traditional Wisconsin wedding, including a live polka band, simply made German dishes of sauerbraten, bratwurst, knockwurst and sauerkraut, along with a selection of German beers that any connoisseur could love.

And being served to rescue workers at Ground Zero, as depicted in World Trade Center? Yes, but not immediately after the attacks.

As the film cuts to reactions from around the world, it stops at a Sheboygan diner where customers are watching news coverage of the terrorist attacks. Later, as rescuers emerge from the smoking ground zero, they walk past a sign that reads "Wisconsin Loves NYC Cops" where they are handed what they are told is "the best brat you'll get in the whole world." The scenes would be gratuitous if they were not grounded in as much fact as pork.
"There were Wisconsin cops at the scene and they did do bratwurst," [director Oliver] Stone said during an interview. The scenes were in the script from the start.

The cameo was too brief for me to check for toppings. In Milwaukee, sauerkraut is permissible. In Sheboygan, that's verboten. Mustard is brown, never yellow.

MORE RECOMMENDED VIEWING. I have on more than one occasion reviewed and recommended books about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in particular focusing on the efforts of a seriously overmatched escort carrier task force to drive off a Japanese battleship fleet. The History Channel's Dogfights has now re-created these efforts, using contemporary computer animation techniques.

In one of the most amazing yet lopsided naval battles in history, a mighty Japanese fleet led by the Yamato, the biggest battleship in the world, versus Taffy 3, a small U.S. task unit of tin can destroyers and baby flat-tops. The U.S. fleet is made up of ships too weak to fight and too slow to run. David battles Goliath in a fight for survival, with the lives of thousands of American soldiers in the balance. We will recreate this famous battle using state of the art computer graphics. Viewers will feel like they're in the battle, facing the enemy.

I've noticed that History Channel will re-run its productions from time to time. Watch for this one, titled Dogfights: Death of the Japanese Navy. (There are a few aviation simulations included.)

SNOW EVENING. Headquarters opted to cancel classes effective 6 pm on Tuesday. (Thus the somewhat earlier start time for that evening's posts.) Any decision to cancel classes in the middle of the academic day will be second-guessed.

University officials discussed closing the DeKalb campus early Tuesday but decided to keep classes open. Elsewhere, Illinois State University, University of Illinois-Champaign, Eastern Illinois University and Western Illinois University canceled all classes for the day.

Conditions became more hazardous later in the day.

Officials decided at 3 p.m. Tuesday to cancel all classes in session after 6 p.m. Officials thought canceling mid-afternoon classes could cause confusion, so the announcement was made for night classes only, [human resources associate vice president Steve] Cunningham said.

University of Illinois-Chicago and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville acted similarly, canceling all classes after 5 p.m.

The 6 pm cancellation spared the second shift its commute. Some years ago, the university opted to cancel all classes in session after 3.30 pm. That decision pleased nobody, as most commuting students and faculty on first shift schedules had already braved the elements only to be told to go home early.

Other weather news: The snow on Monday and Tuesday was augmented by the northeast winds. Here's a snowfall map from the Northern Illinois University weather office. The green blob oriented northwest to southeast, southeast of Rockford, includes DeKalb and two of the principal commuting routes from the Fox Valley.


Wednesday's weather forecast (now overwritten) included these notes.

First, a lot of kudos: First to the student(s) who did a fantastic job here at NIU taking the official measurements during the storm; this was NOT an easy thing to do! Kudos also to the DeKalb Public Works and NIU Grounds for keeping the streets passable...this was difficult with 30-40 MPH wind gusts for 12 hours. When all was said and done, we wound up with 5.5", on the high side of totals expected initially, but within the 3"-6" range. But with enhanced lake effect snow, our eastern campuses got hit harder. O'Hare got 10.2", and Naperville got 5.5". It was quite variable depending on what band of snow you got into. It's all over now except right along the immediate lakeshore and southern suburbs of Chicago. And what is being described as the "near perfect storm" is just blasting the eastern U.S. Areas that got hit with 141" of lake effect snow are bracing for---get this---50" more! If you think it was bad here yesterday, keep reading...

Further east, it looked like this:


See that finger of "lake-enhanced" snow feeding from the Door Peninsula into northeastern Illinois. That persistent snow was the reason the Chicago area universities, and Northern Illinois, decided to cancel the evening sessions. The link shows a number of other radar and satellite images.

And even further east, that's not scenic effects on a Lionel set:


DeKalb received another inch of snow Friday night into Saturday. There have not been any substantial one-day snow events, but the snow cover has had the better part of a month to accumulate. (It has been a while since we've seen that kind of persistence around here.)


The squirrels that live in my tree have been feasting on the corn the neighbors kindly provide.


I'm told the next snow events will accompany above-freezing temperatures. The results will not be as pretty. This snowpack is all cold-air powder. It falls pretty and as long as the temperatures stay low, it stays pretty. The anticipated slush is nowhere near as photogenic.

THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL DISTANCE. At Inside Higher Ed, Terry Caesar laments the lack of consistency in academic courtesy titles.

Recently I heard of an adjunct who insists that her students address her as “Professor.” Also, it seems she wants the word, “Professor,” before her name on any official written communication. It’s not clear to me if she’s been apprized of an apparent university policy whereby only full-time faculty merit the appellation of “professor.” But what are adjuncts to be called instead? Can even adjuncts who have earned doctorates be addressed as “Doctor?”

The problem, dear reader, is in the academy's use of cheap and contingent labor in such a way as to manifest disrespect for the students which the students learn to return in kind.

These are intricate questions. Has any institution in the country worked out completely satisfactory answers to them? Outside of military institutes, are there any that mandate that both teachers and students must never under any circumstances address each other on a first-name basis? Probably as many as mandate that they must only address each other on such a basis. And the rest of us? Nominatively, we flounder.

Nothing intricate at all about this. Put the equivalent of the senior noncom or the chief check pilot in front of the classroom, and get rid of the touchy-feely faculty as buddy stuff and the intricacies disappear.

To her credit, Professor Caesar identifies the root cause of the problem.

Furthermore, as in all things, the great number of adjuncts now among us only exacerbates the problem, most especially when they act to claim hitherto unstated aspects of our identities as professors. After all, we are professors not only because of our contracts or our research. We are professors because we have students who call us professors as well as because we have offices, nameplates, and memos whereupon or wherein we are also so called.

And proposes what strikes me as a suitable solution.

I used to think, for example, that only people outside academic life — authors of self-help books, say — give, “Ph.D.,” after their names. Vulgar ostentation! Now I’ve seen it after the names of more than one college president, on official communications, as well as course syllabi of individual instructors. Are there at least departments whose chairs direct these instructors to remove mention of the degree? But what about cases in which the chair — horrors! — doesn’t have a Ph.D.?

No wonder an American, me, likes to watch old films, such as The Browning Version, about British public schools. The black-robed masters exist in a sublime nominative firmament, from which they bestow the title of “Mr.” upon even the lowliest sixth-form boy. No subjectivity ruffles the public surface. Everybody knows his or her place because everybody knows the proper term for each one. Appellatory bliss! I don’t want to hear that it’s changed in the actual world off-screen or, worse, that it was never so.

Back home, compare the new hire who identities herself beginning with “Doctor,” when she has occasion to call her chair on the phone. Why would anybody do such a thing? In a way, the answer is all too simple: because she has an insecure relation to the discipline and so tries to ground it in a more stable relation to the institution (in the person of her chair).

The solution is in the middle paragraph. On television, John Houseman did it that way as Professor Kingsfield. At Michigan State, Walter Adams did it that way as Professor Adams.

CONTEMPLATING THE MINIMUM WAGE. In the implementation of public policy, allocative efficiency can be a goal. But it doesn't have to be the only goal. A Froma Harrop column demonstrates that there can be right ways and wrong ways to advocate.

One thing about this minimum-wage debate truly fries me. It's the idea that the minimum does not have to be raised because the people who get it don't need the money.

That topic sentence mischaracterizes the argument to follow.

“Many, maybe most, of the gainers from a higher minimum wage are not poor,” Nobel economist Gary Becker and U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner write. As examples, they cite retirees who want to get out of the house “and earn pin money.” On PBS, a businessman in Clarkston, Wash., explains that the servers making minimum at his pizza place aren't adults supporting families but kids who want to go home and “play video games.”

A policy might be more effective if it is implemented in such a way as to benefit the people it is supposed to benefit. If advocates of a higher minimum wage are doing so in order to make it easier for the working poor to support a family, perhaps the knowledge that relatively few minimum wage workers are supporting a family, and that not all minimum wage workers are working poor will sharpen the focus of that advocacy.

There is a conservative worldview that people who don't make serious money aren't serious people. Economic incentives are for entrepreneurs. For the low-of-wage, you put a bowl of nuggets on the ground and pat their heads.

Pure polemics. There is a conservative worldview that labor markets allocate resources efficiently, and that a higher wage for entry level jobs means fewer entry-level hires and more burdens for the remaining workers.

First off, it's not true that minimum-wage earners are overwhelmingly in it for the fun. The average such worker brings home more than half the family's weekly earnings, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. And 9 percent of the beneficiaries of a minimum-wage hike would be single parents.

Huh? Which average? And what do we know about the other 91 percent? On your weight-and-balance happiness scale, how much sacrifice by entry level workers is it worth to provide a modest pay raise to some single parents?

Rather than address that weight and balance, which would be a legitimate (and in my view more compelling) argument, the columnist decides to raise invidious comparisons.

I've not heard of a single case in which a board of directors delved into an executive's spending plans before setting compensation. Imagine their saying: “Our CEO has a house in Palm Beach and a ranch outside Aspen. If we give him an extra $5 million, he'd probably just blow it on another jet. Nope, he doesn't need it.”

That's an interesting logical approach. Yes, Oliver Stone made a movie in which the protagonist justifies a hostile takeover of a company by pointing to the large number of vice presidents he has. But sometimes fiction imitates life.

Investor owned companies exist to make money for the investors, and those investors indeed have reason to tame CEO pay.

The decision by Aflac Inc., made in response to a push by major shareholder groups, comes at a time when the public and the Securities and Exchange Commission are renewing the focus on rising executive compensation.

There are two major questions: whether bosses at large public companies deserve the tens of millions of dollars they sometimes earn, and whether their employers clearly spell out for shareholders exactly what's included in the executives' often-lavish salary, bonus, stock and perquisite packages.

As of late January, big investors have filed resolutions at 44 U.S. companies seeking to give shareholders a non-binding vote on executive pay.

Ms Harrop, however, leaves her envy card on the table, changing topics to make a statement wherein she doesn't fully grasp the implications.

Many conservatives like to both baby and worship the small-business person. They are especially fond of sob stories about how a raise in the minimum will drive a mom-and-pop into bankruptcy. Odd, but businesses seem to cope with increases in electricity rates, property taxes and the price of materials. Where is it written that wages can't go up? The minimum hasn't budged in 10 years.

If business owners can't make a decent profit paying their workers a minimum wage - that adjusted for inflation would still be lower than it was in 1969 - then perhaps, just perhaps, they shouldn't be in business.

In the conservative songbook, however, never is heard a discouraging word about the heroics of the small-business person. It's always some government regulation that's tripping them up - never that they took on too much debt, their burgers aren't as good as another guy's or they're selling the wrong thing.

"Conservatives" do? Is the continued regulation of electricity prices in notionally deregulated markets, or anti-big-box retail legislation, or a tax exemption for business property "conservative?" Such legislation is protective of small business, but it's worth remembering that small business owners are often defenders of free enterprise in the abstract, but quick to seek legislative or injunctive relief from the slap of the invisible hand that sometimes comes from the mistakes enumerated in the final sentence I quoted.

LIGHTEN UP. Really.

In a region where the high school experience has evolved into an advanced placement-fueled academic arms race, parents and school officials are starting to do the unthinkable: They're saying no to adolescents who want to load up on AP courses, schedule eight-period days and join the school newspaper, track team and high school band at the same time.

Instead, they're encouraging them to take honors instead of AP courses, instituting homework-free weekends and changing class schedules to give students time to breathe and regroup between subjects.

They're also attempting to reclaim high school.

"We're trying to change the atmosphere so that people understand it's better to have a well-balanced student going to a 'good fit' college, as opposed to a neurotic going to an Ivy League school," said Fran Landau, director of school counseling at Whitman.

Last fall, Holton Arms, a private girls' school in Bethesda, introduced a schedule designed to give students more time to meet with teachers outside of class as well as more free periods during the week to pursue individual interests. The school also encourages parents to delay the college search until junior year.

And to reclaim middle school.

Even middle schools are getting into the act. Thomas W. Pyle Middle in Bethesda, which feeds into Whitman, has established homework-free weekends and study skills workshops to help children become more organized and less stressed.

The positional arms race, however, is a prisoners' dilemma, and the ambitious understand the dominant strategy.

When Marcy Berger's son Andrew, a thoughtful, highly motivated college-bound student at Whitman, told her as a freshman that he wanted to take an eight-period day-- one more period than is typical -- she told him no. He went to his counselor, who agreed with Mom.

Two years later, when Andrew begged her to let him add AP English to his packed schedule, the answer was the same: No.

But that time, she lost -- a defeat she attributes to family dynamics. While she preaches moderation, her easygoing attitude is not necessarily shared by her husband or son. She relented, and Andrew got an A in the course.

That dominant strategy, moreover, is not necessarily a coordination failure. Greater prosperity for everybody can be the byproduct of greater effort by the ambitious.

LEE HARVEY AHMADINEJAD? Look who else is buying mail-order rifles.

Well, here's an item that doesn't seem to have been manufactured by Dick Cheney. According to a report in Britain's Daily Telegraph, U.S. forces in Baghdad have recently discovered 100 high-powered sniper rifles made by Austrian gun-maker Steyr-Mannlicher. The .50-caliber Steyr can accurately fire an armor-piercing round at a range of 1,500 meters. The weapon is good against Humvees, helicopters and body armor.

And, as is the case with mail-order rifles, the buyer has the opportunity to lie about their end use.

In 2004, Iran purchased some 800 Steyrs, allegedly for use against drug traffickers. At the time, both U.S. and British officials urged the Austrian government to bar the $15 million sale, fearing the weapons would fall into enemy hands. Former Austrian Chancellor Wolfang Schüssel thought otherwise, and let the deal go forward. To better grease the skids, then-Steyr-Mannlicher CEO Wolfgang Fürlinger made the case that the weapons were basically harmless and that Tehran had signed "end-user certificates" guaranteeing they would not be re-sold, according to the German newsweekly Der Spiegel.

Today, the Austrian government pleads that the sale had been "checked very thoroughly," and that "what happened to the weapons . . . is the responsibility of the Iranians"--which prompts the question of why the Austrians would have bothered with the end-user certificates. The Bush Administration took a less cavalier view and in 2005 banned Steyr-Mannlicher from bidding for U.S. government contracts.

It remains to be confirmed whether the serial numbers on the Steyrs found in Iraq match those from the 2004 sale--if they do, it ought to prompt a top-to-bottom review of all Austrian military contracts. Meantime, is it too much to expect American journalists and Members of Congress to devote as much skepticism to Iran's motives and behavior as they do to Mr. Bush's?

I'd rephrase that last question. Journalists and Members are in a better position to influence U.S., as opposed to Iranian, government policy. Perhaps, however, the former misunderstand their role, which is to report, not to advocate, and among the latter, some have forgotten that the Opposition is still supposed to be loyal.

POSTMODERN SUBBOTNIKS. The commissars of faculty "development" offer two, two, two fads in one workshop.

This workshop will address an approach to teaching, learning, and scholarship that is frequently connected to multicultural outcomes: service-learning. Service-learning is often heralded as a community-based approach to teaching and learning with "transformative" potential. This interactive session will provide an overview of how service-learning fits within the landscape of higher education, an introduction to the fundamentals of service-learning, an exploration of the connections between service-learning and multicultural issues, an examination of what we know about multicultural outcomes associated with service-learning, and an exploration of student resistance to service-learning.

It is no accident that the syllabus uses the phrase "student resistance." The workshop outline devotes 75 minutes to "Overcoming Student Resistance to Service Learning." "Resistance" is a therapeutic term of art for "When You Understand Your True Self, You Will Like It." Why does it not surprise me that students might bridle at providing unpaid labor for a faculty member's activism, which is the dirty little secret of service learning, or that its advocates would view that bridling as cause for some re-education?

TO ILLUSTRATE THE FOLLY OF A RULE, COMPLY WITH IT. The rules committee for college football proposes a number of rule changes, some of which are evidently popular, including backing up the kickoff to the 30-yard line (does that change the payoff to an onside kick?), and starting the clock when somebody touches the kickoff, an evident response to Wisconsin's Brett "Offside Kick" Bielema.

BRING IT. Some temporary functionary at Wisconsin-Eau Claire suggests the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a pack of paper tigers.

UW-Eau Claire is once again feeling the heat from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which said the university's sexual harassment policy violates the Constitution.

FIRE released the Spotlight on Speech Codes report in December, which rated university policies from more than 300 colleges across the nation on their levels of freedom of expression."FIRE's research focuses in particular on public universities because public universities are legally bound by the First Amendment to protect students' right to free speech," Samantha Harris, director of Legal and Public Advocacy for FIRE, said in an e-mail to The Spectator.

Eau Claire was one of 229 universities that severely restrict freedom of expression, according to the report.

Steve Tallant, interim provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, said that while he acknowledges FIRE's right to have an opinion on university policies, he questions the"standards and methodology" behind their analysis."

They say our policies are unconstitutional," Tallant said. "If (the policies) were unconstitutional, they would be in court right now."

The tigers are prepared to spring some papers.

Mr. Tallant is incorrect. The reason that UWEC’s and hundreds of other schools’ policies are not in court is not because they are constitutional, but simply because no one has come forward to challenge them. To bring a lawsuit against a college or university over an unconstitutional speech code, there must be a student or faculty member at that university who wants to act as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. That individual need not have actually been punished under the school’s policies—in First Amendment law, merely being forced to live under a policy that unlawfully restricts your freedom of speech is an injury that gives you the right to bring suit.

If you are a student or faculty member at a public university who is interested in challenging your school’s speech code, FIRE wants to help. Through our Legal Network, we have already coordinated lawsuits at several universities that have led to the demise of unconstitutional speech codes (for example, take a look at the 2003 suit against Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania). We would like nothing more than to help bring down unlawful speech codes at other colleges and universities, but we need students and faculty at those schools who are willing to stand up for their rights. If you fit the bill, please get in touch with us and help us show misguided administrators like Mr. Tallant the error of their ways.

Do I have time to do something about the Northern Illinois red light?

(Via Phi Beta Cons.)

INFELICITOUS CHOICE OF WORDS. Iraqi forces might have gotten a piece of the current leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. I like Associated Press's rendition of his c.v.

[Abu Ayyub] Al-Masri took over the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq after its charismatic leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike last June in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

That's not the adjective I'd apply to the Head Headchopper.

Elsewhere in the Southwest Asian Theater, the Revolutionary Guards take hit after hit.

A bomb exploded in southeastern Iran late Friday, near the site where an earlier explosion this week killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, the state-run news agency IRNA reported.

"Minutes ago, the sound of a bomb explosion was heard in one of Zahedan's streets," the agency said. The report offered no further details, including whether there were casualties.

On Wednesday, a car blew up a bus owned by the elite troops in Zahedan, capital of the Sistan-Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan.

Is that "elite" as in "they goose as well as the Waffen-SS?"

NEVER MIND THE GROUNDHOG. Pay no attention to that approaching Alberta Clipper. It's mid-February.

Brewers pitchers and catchers must formally report to Maryvale Baseball Park by Friday, though many of them -- and not just the pitchers and catchers -- have been using the team's sprawling Spring Training facility for weeks. Position players must report by Feb. 23, and manager Ned Yost will give his annual full-squad pep talk on a back field Feb. 24.

Here's a preview: No more excuses. We're here to win.

Prepare the Cracker Jacks.

FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME.

President Kennedy is murdered. The suspected assassin, a former Marine who defects and undefects to the Soviet Union, is himself murdered two days later by a Dallas nightclub owner who migrated from Chicago. Had it been a movie, it would have a convoluted plot involving the Mob and Dr. Strangelove and Jack Bauer's father. Oh, sorry, that's two movies.

I just finished watching The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy, which is as compelling a demolition of the assorted conspiracy theories as I have had occasion to watch. History Channel will be running it again. It's worth watching, particularly for my readers who aren't able to remember what they were doing on November 22, 1963. It uses the latest in computer-assisted modeling to view the events in the Zapruder film from every possible angle, including from the sniper's nest and from a trailing motorcycle escort. That modeling demonstrates, quite conclusively, that the second shot, which wounded the President and Governor Connally, was not a magical shot, and that the fatal third shot came from behind. (Some years ago, Nova (or was it Frontline?) ran simulations that drew the same conclusion although the modeling wasn't quite as compelling.)

More persuasively, the show interviews Lee Oswald's older brother Robert, who, quite simply, states that if he had the least bit of information that others were involved in a plot he would be public with it, and Jack Ruby's brother, who explains that Jack was prone to exaggerating any involvement he had with anything that would add to his fame. One of the dancers from the Carousel Club recalls that Jack Ruby was quite angry and sounding off on the evening of November 22 about wanting to kill the assassin. Both Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby were loners (today one might call Oswald a "throwaway kid") seeking notoriety.

So what happened? A Quaker couple, Michael and Ruth Paine (who appear in the show, looking exactly like Silent Generation Quakers) befriend Marina Oswald, and through a friend find Lee Oswald a job as warehouseman for the School Book Depository. A few days after he starts work, the press reports the motorcade route. Oswald, who envisioned himself an assassin, sees an opportunity.

On Sunday morning, November 24, Jack Ruby goes downtown to wire one of his dancers an advance on her pay. He then slips into police headquarters. Lee Oswald's transfer is running a bit late, and he arrives just in time to commit the first murder to be televised live.

A series of small decisions combine in such a way as to look like a conspiracy. But for a different favor from the friend, or a longer line at Western Union, or a faster transfer ...

The show concludes with a meditation from William Manchester that explains the fascination with assassination conspiracies. I can't locate it online quickly, it's the one that has the Shoah precipitated by the Third Reich (an atrocity worthy of its cause) on one hand while the assassination is the work of a nobody (the books don't balance.)

OPPORTUNITY COSTS. The Mid-American Conference has long been an incubator of coaches. Success on the football field means new job opportunities for assistant coaches.

While two positions have been filled, NIU head coach Joe Novak is still in need of coaches to occupy the offices marked "running back coach" and "offensive coordinator."

But losing voices in the office is nothing new. After a 10-2 season in 2003, four new coaches joined the team. From the 2005 to 2006 season, Novak had to replace coaches for the wide receivers, defensive interior and secondary.

So replacing coaches for the offensive line, wide receivers, running backs and an offensive coordinator is a just a normal offseason for the 12th-year coach.

"That's the nature of schools like ours," Novak said. "If you're hiring good people, others will notice."

And pay.

But something else which bigger programs can offer coaches is a big paycheck. Novak said all the coaches who have left this season have at least doubled their
salaries.

[Offensive coordinator John] Bond said this wasn't a factor for why he left.

"One of my goals is to be a coordinator at a BCS school," Bond said. "They could have paid me less [than NIU]."

That's called a compensating differential. On the other hand, hiring out with Georgia Tech or North Carolina or Minnesota means having to learn a lot, as we say in the Inland.

Despite not being able to compete against the doubled salary, Novak can offer the success of his program. And for some coaches, a winning program will mean more than a large salary.

Which might explain why Novak has two or three ex-head coaches and a few BCS coordinators fighting over Bond's former role.

"I think [the quality] is going to become obvious from the pool of candidates who want the offensive coordinator role," Bond said. "If people knew some of these names, they might be shocked."

Research problem: Suppose higher education abolished tenure as we currently understand it. Would positional arms races in academic departments become more like those in football?

STAY BETWEEN YOUR OPPONENT AND THE MARK. Wednesday evening, second place in the Mid-American West was at stake. (It's been a long time since the stakes were that high in February.) The game was pretty close most of the way, with 18 lead changes.

The way to defeat the strategy of fouling to gain time is to make free throws.


Eastern Michigan stopped fouling, and the Huskies ran out the clock.


Thus endeth the brief losing streak.

AN OLYMPIAN HIAWATHA? Chicago has been chasing the 2016 Olympics, and the neighbors want a piece of the action.

A Chicago Olympics would likely bring more than a half million people to the Windy City. A few events could end up within a short drive of Milwaukee, including the possibility of mountain biking at Kettle Moraine State Forest's southern unit. But most of the competition would take place in and near downtown Chicago, and most visitors would probably book hotel rooms as close as possible to those venues.

Still, with that many people pouring into town, there would be a spillover into southeastern Wisconsin, said Patrick Sandusky, spokesman for the Chicago 2016 Committee, which is organizing the city's Olympics bid. Even Milwaukee, which is 90 miles away, could benefit, in part because of the Amtrak trains that run several times a day between the two cities, he said.

No train service is likely to be available, unfortunately, to a potential playing field for the soccer preliminaries.


By 2016, construction on the locker room should be finished. I suspect that the end-zones will not be converted into terraces so that the yobs will feel at home.

THE WAY WE WERE. King Banaian finds a compendium of ten great college pranks. Among them, the antics of the Pail and Shovel Party when it obtained a majority in the Wisconsin Student Association, which garnered a third place.

Jim Mallon and Leon Varjian were elected as student body president in 1979 under the party they created called Pail and Shovel (P&S) party. The party was named after a campaign promise to dump the entire student budget onto the ground in the form of pennies and allow students to come collect as much as they could with a pail and shovel. They also promised to cover the lawn of the administration building with pink flamingoes and buy the Statue of Liberty and bring it to Wisconsin.

They made good on these promises. The Statue of Liberty was spotted sticking her head and torch in hand out of the waters of Lake Mendota in Wisconsin. Sadly, she only stood in the lake for three weeks before the replica statue was burned as a victim of arsonists. It was rebuilt a year later, this time fireproof, but later removed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources because they believed it resembled a fishing shanty which was against their regulations.

The P&S party had many enemies and the campus newspaper was well staffed with them, as they had a photographer on hand to capture the burning of the replica statue that they claimed no responsibility for. The P&S party got their revenge by winning the election again the next year and rebuilding it. Unfortunately, this great monument now lives in a shed.

The Statue of Liberty made an appearance, foreshadowing that movie of a few years ago in which super-hurricanes sucked super-cold air down from the edge of space.

Jess Anderson image.
More Statue of Liberty at Google Images.

The lawn flamingoes went up on Bascom Hill. I had left by the time that happened, but postcards that might still be on offer in Madison bookstores showing those flamingoes on the hill are not Photoshopped.

The student fee rebate was not scattered on the Library Mall. But each student who registered in early September, 1978, did receive a rebate. Mine's a bit faded. I can still make out Senator Zappa's signature.

It doesn't surprise that the Daily Cardinal would enjoy the trashing of the statue. Pail and Shovel came up with the proper antidote to the alliance of the Cardinal as propagandist and the Wisconsin Student Association as the funder of the Muevement (which is the way the heavies pronounced "movement" in those days.) Their antidote was simply to make mock of the overly earnest campus radicals of the day. Somebody once asked a Pail and Shovel mainstay what "SUFAC" meant. His response: Silly Uninformed Fools Allocating Cash. (The real name was something along the lines of Student-University Fee Allocating Committee.) The totally non-political approach resonated in a way that conservative or libertarian guerrilla theater (such as affirmative action bake sales) would not.

REALLY USEFUL INFORMATION. A site that apparently aggregates any and all references to Thomas the Tank Engine picked up one of my recent posts. That site has a permanent link to material suggesting Thomas Helps Autistic Kids.

Reports show children with ASD associate more closely with Thomas than other children's toys and in fact express greater emotion and imagination than before the toys are introduced.

That's in addition to aiding and abetting the recruitment of the next generation of ferroequinologists.

NINETY MINUTES FROM NAPERVILLE. Kewanee's upscale Good's Furniture have been running a new radio commercial on inter alia Milt Rosenberg's program. That "ninety minutes" is by train. (It's not such a good option from DeKalb. By the time one has driven to Mendota one might as well drive on to Kewanee.) Kewanee is a positive stop for the Illinois Zephyr and Carl Sandburg, although its station facilities are charitably described as those of a "halt."

Will Good's attempt to build its trade by setting up an extension of its bistro and bakery trackside? Something there is appeals about the trackside pubs at Reading or Crewe. Why not a microbrewery in Kewanee? Silver Streak Ale or Exposition Flyer Stout, but not Pullman Porter!