NO CHICKEN DANCING IN THE COMPUTER LAB. The economics graduate students at California offer Berkeley Rocks with a cameo appearance by Brad DeLong. Recommended at Market Power.

I DON'T WANT TO BE A CHICKEN, I DON'T WANT TO BE A DUCK. Word reaches Cold Spring Shops of the passing of Bob Kames, born Kujawa.

In 1949, he composed a pop tune, calling it, "You Are My One True Love," based on a Polish folk song. Turned down by major labels, he released it through a local record company, paying for the first 5,000 records himself.

It was picked up by London Records in England, becoming a huge hit.

"He wrote that for [Edith Campbell]," Bob Jr. said. "It was a million-seller. Lawrence Welk recorded it and Frankie Yankovic . . . and others."

The couple finally married in 1955. While their legal name remained Kujawa, they were known to most as Bob and Edith Kames.

Kames went on to make his "Happy Organ" and other albums. In 1966, he produced his first television show, "The Bob Kames Family Room," and other specials followed over the next 17 years. Guests included Lawrence Welk, Hildegarde, Frankie Yankovic, Bobby Vinton and Don Ho. He also performed at Summerfest, Festa Italiana, Polish Fest, Rainbow Summer and other venues.

I was not aware that his perhaps best known work is relatively recent.

As for that "Chicken Dance," even a self-promoter like Kames couldn't quite believe how it caught on.

His record producer heard the song at a German music fair in 1982 and shipped it right off to Kames, who recorded his version the same week.

"This stupid little thing, it's infectious," Kames said, speaking in 1995. "It has only two chords, it doesn't even change for the bridge. It implants the melody in people's minds - it just sticks in there. That's gotta be the secret.

"It just keeps on going. People come up to me at jobs and tell me how happy it makes them," Kames said. "You get a song like this once in a lifetime."

That Wikipedia choreography must have come from Minnesota. I have the tape, with words and dance instructions (as if Cheeseheads, even displaced ones, require written instructions) and the trio is

Reach out your arms and swing your partner
Make like a bird and try to fly
Come on out there you hens and roosters
Just hook your arms and don't be shy.

CONDOLENCES. Econ Log's Arnold Kling honors his father Merle Kling, provost emeritus of Washington University.

"Merle Kling was one of the greats of Washington University," former chancellor William H. Danforth said in a statement released by the university. "His balance and good sense protected both academic freedom and academic quality through the late 1960s and early '70s and kept Washington University a humane and decent place."

MEND IT, DON'T END IT. Our operating staff raise practical objections to demolishing Cole Hall.

Several participants were very critical of destroying Cole Hall. Linda Larsen, Materials Management stores manager, called the idea ridiculous, adding that other schools where shootings have ocurred did not tear down buildings.

Larsen said that as time goes on and students come and go, the stigma will fade.

“Anyone else who comes here will have no idea, no connection to what happened in that building,” Larsen said.

Mary Schlagel, asbestos program coordinator with Environmental Health and Safety, said the heavy equipment needed for a demolition in such a high area of traffic area could be a liability for the university.

Simultaneously, different members of the group emphasized time as the key element.

“The longer you keep it closed, the harder it is to get people in there,” said Jay Garman, heating plan stationary engineer.

Schlagel added that the two lecture halls in Cole Hall are too valuable to close forever.

“We need two 500-seat auditoriums. We have 10 locations to cover two rooms,”
Schlagel said. “We can’t close it down.”

Just as everyone present at the discussion group voiced to keep Cole Hall, everyone also agreed with the idea of remodeling Cole Hall to memorialize the tragedy.

Larsen suggested turning the central hallway of Cole Hall into a peace area, while Garman said that changing the appearance of the rooms is a possibility.

Mechanical engineer Atique Ahmed said the best memorial would be one that allows students to get an education.

“That is the best memory we can give to people,” Ahmed said. However, as described by architecture engineering draftsman John Moluf, funding might be the key factor in the future of Cole Hall.

Those positions are not much different from mine, which one can infer from reading this.

A change in the appearance of the rooms, which remain in their late-1960s, bare-bones lecture hall configuration, is probably overdue. The central hallway contained a few displays from the anthropology collection, and the display cases have looked worn (or empty) for some time.

HEADING OFF THAT CIVIL WAR. The Wisconsin legislature is ready to vote on ratifying the Great Lakes Compact. The article notes only that a special session of the legislature is pending. It does not note whether Wisconsin is proposing amendments to the compact. Those are not bookkeeping quibbles. Some state legislators objected to the compact as it appeared to give the governors of other Great Lakes states veto power over water projects that previously could be approved within Wisconsin. And, as the compact has not yet been put in the form of a treaty with Canada, there is still potential for landlocked and coastal states to hold up a treaty in the Senate. The article's optimism about the compact preventing for all time the export of water to southern and southwestern states strikes me as premature. I must continue to note the absence of any discussion of water pricing in the development of the compact.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Eugene Kane notes that the failings of the Milwaukee Public Schools ought not be laid off on the students.

Just recently, the Milwaukee Public Schools system was identified as one of several districts in the nation with a graduation rate of less than 50%, which probably has something to do with all those fourth- and eighth-graders who never learn how to read and write. For some of us, it's hard to imagine such poor performance.

My earliest memories of education involve being a black boy with a "gift" for reading and writing. I got compliments for my work from the adults in my life, and that made me want to do even better in class. Sure, I was subjected to the usual "four-eyes" and "brainiac" taunts (my generation's version of criticizing black students for "acting white"), but it never turned me off education.

My parents wouldn't allow it. They weren't college-educated, but my father - who worked construction - was seldom without a book in his hand after work. His habit of reading was passed down to his son, which I believe is pretty much the way you end up with a kid with a "gift" for reading and writing. Whenever I visit schools to talk to today's students, I always stress reading and writing skills as a way to ensure a bright future. But I wonder how often that message gets reinforced in the homes.

Some racial topics are controversial, but I've found few people ever complain about a headline that says "State Black 8th-Graders Rank Worst In Nation." For some, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that confirms their prejudice; for others, it's an uncomfortable stamp of inferiority that adds another layer to the problem.

To be fair, the headline should probably be more inclusive next time, naming Wisconsin as the home of "the worst teachers and parents of black eighth-grade students in the nation."

Tough talk, but it reinforces my assertion that one ought not use the "takes a village" maxim lightly: the village that reinforces the norms of the slum or the hippie commune is not likely to produce offspring of great intellectual curiosity or moral character. Perhaps, forty years after the death of Rev^d King, there is progress in Mr Kane concluding as he does, rather than accusing all observers of the disaster that is the Milwaukee Public Schools of blaming the victim.

One pedantic footnote: "four-eyes" and "braniac" are color-neutral manifestations of resentment against achievement.

WHY IT MATTERS. At Phi Beta Cons, George Leef sees the fallacy of composition in treating the premium to college degrees (earned twenty to thirty years ago) as reason to extend college education to everyone.

High-aptitude, energetic young people who go to college and then into lucrative professions pull the average up, but their experience is quite irrelevant to the marginal student who isn't especially interested in or good at academic work. Luring that kind of student into college with the idea that having a degree will make his life much better is reprehensible.

Mr Leef sees the injustice done to the marginal students, who have been fooled by a form of bait and switch and might get diverted into the Departments of Cooling Out the Mark. There are further injustices done to the "high-aptitude, energetic" students who are not challenged properly when inefficiently many marginal students slow the pace of a class, or demoralize the faculty.

RECANT, OR BE EXCOMMUNICATED. The Diet of Worms convenes in Colorado Springs, where a Colorado College student posts less than ninety theses that parody the women of the fevered brow. Colorado College administrators use our troubles to justify the Holy Inquisition that follows.

College spokeswoman Jane Turnis emphasizes that The Monthly Bag was plastered around campus just weeks after the shootings at Northern Illinois University. Fine, but from the outset officials were intent on condemning speech as much as in discovering whether they had a weirdo on their hands. That much is obvious from a campuswide e-mail President Richard Celeste sent out the same day. He denounced the flier's content as both "threatening and demeaning" before pompously urging an "appropriate" discussion of "how gender impacts our experience of the world and one another."

The e-mail could have been written by the folks in Feminist and Gender Studies.

Celeste - who may be unfamiliar with the rich tradition of anonymous political satire in this country dating to the Revolution - invited the "coalition of some dudes" to identify themselves, which the two-man coalition promptly did. Case closed, right? Two normal students and a harmless parody. No, not quite.

[Parody author Chris] Robinson tells me that his appearance before a "student conduct committee" was an hours-long ordeal in which he was quizzed about his views on gender, class, sexism and privilege, among other things. It was "political correctness on steroids," he says, engineered by a "persecuting special-interest group" that has the college administration in its thrall.

Apparently neither Colorado College president Richard Celeste nor the Holy Inquisition found it necessary to show Mr Robinson the instruments of torture.

Fortunately, the rest of the world understands that today's Holy Inquisition is a figure of fun.

Does Celeste appreciate the losing hand he holds? Perhaps, since he told a Colorado Springs TV station that the two students "were not sanctioned or punished." No? Perhaps not officially, but being taken to task by your college president and dean of students, as well as interrogated by a tribunal, might reasonably be considered punishment by some. Or at least an exercise in intimidation.

Colorado College's policy on academic freedom insists that "On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden." Robinson is challenging the college to reclaim that ideal.

As he declared recently in the campus newspaper, "Colorado College is a private institution, which means that from a legal standpoint it can do whatever it wants regarding speech. It can enforce political positions it regards as sacrosanct with legal impunity. But should it? Do you as a student think CC should be a campus with less protection for free speech than Pikes Peak Community College?"

That's a weak ending, although the editorialists might have something satirical in mind, mocking the upscale private college with a decent hockey team providing a hothouse environment for its charges, while the local community college (by law?) behaves as though its charges are made of sterner stuff. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (disclaimer: I am supporter and contributor) has a roundup of Colorado College coverage.

MARKET TESTS. A USA Today editorialist understands that universities compete for students.

College presidents accurately say they are caught in a bind. If they don't have fancy gyms and near-gourmet food in the cafeterias, choosy students will enroll elsewhere. Plus, cutting back on per-pupil expenditures can hurt a college in some rankings.

The editorial starts with basketball parvenu Davidson College, where $43,000 an academic year includes laundry service. Presumably, other kinds of choosy students can shop around for less pricey options. I continue to wonder, however, whether the flight to amenities doesn't conceal a reluctance of students to expose themselves to the seamy side of access-assessment-remediation-retention.

There is also competition for faculty, which the columnist doesn't understand.

Colleges should value their professors for actually teaching classes. Even research universities can boost teaching loads to limit faculty size. University of Maryland Chancellor William Kirwan once responded to a budget crisis by increasing the faculty workload, an action considered both startling and brave. It should be normal.

I must investigate the faculty turnover at Maryland. One of the individuals recommended by a student for our graduate colloquium series recently moved from Maryland to Notre Dame. Although Maryland tends to score above Notre Dame in the economics hierarchy, and although one anecdote does not a trend make, there are limits to an administration's ability to change the job descriptions of its faculty, even when it's a hold-up of a faculty member who made the transaction-specific investment called "earning tenure". Valuing professors for teaching is not the same thing as increasing class sizes and scheduling them into more sections.

MARX, WITH STRANGE ATTRACTORS? The downside of complexity is complexity.

Since the Medieval Industrial Revolution, Western Civilization has relied on increasing wealth through the replacement of human power for other power sources. In the Medieval times it was water power. Then we switched to coal, then to oil, and now we're starting to move to electricity. This transference is a Good Thing - the elimination of slavery, for one - but it comes at a cost.

The assertion is partially true: the medieval economy did not have the same rules of contract or the same attitude toward experimentation than we did. Thus, the argument overlooks one possible way out.

Further, the energy becomes a fundamental necessity for that level of technology in that Fitness Landscape. When all of the potential sources for water power had been used the Medieval economy stopped growing. There was only so much energy that could be used to do so much work with so much raw resources.

When that happens the Fitness Landscape has to change because the conditions have changed. This means the Actors who were the fittest during times of growth are no longer the fittest and they, and the Fitness Landscape simplify.

I agree, the Actors might to adapt. Their adaptation, however, might include new rules for the more complex world.

IT'S NOT A SOUVENIR. Sycamore, Illinois, still has penny parking meters and the fine for a parking violation is ... two bits. Some people deliberately let the meter expire to get a relatively cheap conversation piece, but there are others who are abusing the system.

Police Chief Don Thomas said the fines are the cheapest in the nation and are often disregarded by employees of downtown businesses and those who work at the DeKalb County Courthouse who spend all day in spaces intended for downtown shoppers. He proposed raising the first ticket from 25 cents to $1 and the second ticket from $1 to $2. He said those fines would still be among the lowest in the country.

“We're hoping a $1 fine will at least get their attention,” he said.

Though 1st Ward Alderman Rich Neubauer said he was in favor of raising the amount for the second ticket, he feared that raising the 25-cent fine to $1 would discourage downtown shopping.

“I'm concerned we're also going to catch in the net the people who just had an oops, and that's going to create a negative impression of our downtown,” he said.

Even at $2 and $3 fines, some frequent offenders have garnered hundreds of dollars in unpaid tickets, City Manager Bill Nicklas said. Two people owe more than $1,000 apiece, while a dozen more owe at least $250.

Sycamore officials are considering giving scofflaw cars the boot.

OUR FRIENDS ON THE SOUTH SIDE. The Chicago White Sox honored our fallen students along with members of the Sox organization who over the winter have made the final out.

Northern Star photo by Alan Cesar.

[Northern Illinois president John] Peters later joined the families of victims of the Feb. 14 shootings in a private suite to watch the game.

“[The families] are doing remarkably well, they are tremendously strong people,” Peters said. “Obviously, they have things to share with each other. They’re talking to each other about their experiences.”

The White Sox gave the families pinstriped jerseys with the last names printed on the back and the number “08,” as well as baseballs signed by Buehrle.

Each of the victims was honored during the pregame moment of silence, which has traditionally honored members of the White Sox family who have died.

On Monday, photos of Gayle Dubowski, Catalina Garcia, Julianna Gehant, Daniel Parmenter and Ryanne Mace accompanied those of former White Sox players and other former members of the organization who died in the last year.

“On the field, it was very emotional when the White Sox integrated our five students with their players that died in the last year,” Peters said.

I've identified my American League favorite for this year. No dilemma, as no interleague games between the Brewers and the White Sox this year.

On Wednesday, April 16 the White Sox host a collegiate baseball game featuring Notre Dame and Northern Illinois.

REVEALED PREFERENCES. Several of the young ladies named to the all-Milwaukee area basketball teams are headed to our neighbors. One member of the first team will be in the Mid-American, at Miami of Ohio; two will join Cleveland State; and one will be with Loyola of Chicago, the Jesuit university with hot dog stands rather than Real Chili nearby. Two members of the runner-up teams will have the opportunity to break training at Real Chili, as they sign with this year's Womens' National Invitational champion, the Marquette Warriors, er, Golden Eagles, formerly of the North Star Conference. (The realignments are sometimes convoluted. At one time Marquette and Notre Dame and DePaul and Northern Illinois were in the North Star conference, then Northern Illinois and Loyola and Green Bay and Milwaukee together in the Mid-Continent, now Northern Illinois is again in the Mid-American.)

THE QUARTERLY BOOK REPORT. The first quarter offered tornadoes in January, enough snow to cleanse the atmosphere of dust, a winter that still isn't done, and Cruel February.

I made progress on this year's Fifty Book Challenge nonetheless, and there will be more book reviews in the near future.

1. The Boomer: A Story of the Rails, 14 January 2008.
2. There Goes The Neighborhood, 16 January 2008.
3. The Economic Naturalist, 18 January 2008.
4. Caught in the Middle, 19 January 2008.
5. New York's Pennsylvania Stations, 21 January 2008.
6. The God Delusion, 27 January 2008.
7. Reclaiming History, 28 January 2008.
8. The Age of Abundance, 30 January 2008.
9. Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport, 4 February 2008.

The 2008 bookworm begins with nine segments, and there are likely to be more red and black segments as it grows this year.

Oooooooooo

Crossposted at European Tribune and the Fifty Book Challenge.

BECAUSE YOU ASKED FOR IT. The question.

When did social conscience become an acceptable substitute for actual intelligence?

The answer.

Instead of allowing students to challenge each other's conceptions of race and volunteerism, Boston College has opted to "protect" them through censorship, lest they draw their own conclusions about the merits and cultural, social and political ramifications of service trips. Instead of having students educate each other through the dialogue this flyer inevitably would have started, Dean Chebator has decided that only Boston College administrators are fit to be the arbiters of what the flyer's content really means. In Chebator's "educational" process, flyers need to be officially "addressed" and students need to be officially "educated," with all substantive pedagogical direction being issued from the top down as an imperative command to be followed, not questioned.

It's faculty complicity in progressive intolerance that encourages students to substitute their sense of grievance for proper inquiry.

DECEPTIVELY GREAT PROGRESS.

Click each image for a larger view.

Here are the motion brackets, with crosshead ledges in place.



There's more to this than meets the eye. I learned a few tricks about using resistance soldering in such a way as to not unsolder one component in the act of soldering another. The piston rods slide relatively smoothly in the crosshead guides. The cylinders require a bit more application of dry-slide, or perhaps a session with polishing compound to open things further.

The brackets have now been fitted to the main frame. Each attachment is sprung. If hobbyists are wondering where all the 0-80 machine screws in greater DeKalb have gone, look no further.


Here is the fireman's side, cropped in builder's photo fashion.


Next, the valve gear. I have discovered from previous kits that "looks about right" isn't good enough. One really must lay the components out such that the combination lever is vertical at mid-stroke (rods up or down) and the link is vertical at the dead centers. Otherwise there will be rough running, if you're only slightly unlucky, or outright binding. To get it right, a modeler might have to cut his own radius and eccentric rods and union link. The union link allows some latitude in using off-the-shelf combination levers, such as the Lobaugh components Locomotive Workshop once supplied.

HOW A RICH MAN WAGES WAR. That's an observation a German prisoner made to a G.I., as reported later by Stephen Ambrose. In the middle of a report on the military's energy bill come changes in war-waging methods. The article's focus is on the military paying list price for fuel.

Think you're being gouged by Big Oil? U.S. troops in Iraq are paying almost as much as Americans back home, despite burning fuel at staggering rates in a war to stabilize a country known for its oil reserves.

Military units pay an average of $3.23 a gallon for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, some $88 a day per service member in Iraq, according to an Associated Press review and interviews with defense officials. A penny or two increase in the price of fuel can add millions of dollars to U.S. costs.

Critics in Congress are fuming. The U.S., they say, is getting suckered as the cost of the war exceeds half a trillion dollars - $10.3 billion a month, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Some lawmakers say oil-rich allies in the Middle East should be doing more to subsidize fuel costs because of the stake they have in a secure Iraq. Others point to Iraq's own burgeoning surplus as crude oil prices top $100 a barrel. Baghdad subsidies let Iraqis pay only about $1.36 a gallon.

Subsidized fuel is an incentive for government employees to sell it at market and pocket the arbitrage profit. The war isn't any cheaper if the military is receiving subsidized fuel.

The article reviews some history.

Overall, the military consumes about 1.2 million barrels, or more than 50 million gallons of fuel, each month in Iraq at an average $127.68 a barrel. That works out to about $153 million a month.

Historically, these figures are astounding. In World War II, the average fuel consumption per soldier or Marine was about 1.67 gallons a day; in Iraq, it's 27.3 gallons, according to briefing slides prepared by a Pentagon task force established to review consumption.

The surge in demand can be attributed in part to the military's expanding aviation fleet, including helicopters, and its reliance on planes to shuttle cargo and troops between the U.S. and Iraq. Vehicles, too, are more heavily armored and require more energy to run. Another major contributor is the widespread use of generators to cool troops.

Air conditioned tents, forsooth. What would Gen^l Grant outside Vicksburg in June of 1863 have made of that? It does sound like the rich man's way of waging war: the U.S., to score propaganda points, made much of its troops being transported to the ports of embarkation in Pullman cars. Admittedly, some of those were glorified side-door Pullmans with three-high bunks, but you get the idea.

At the margin, the military's use of petroleum products has little effect on world markets. But one possible sign of Iraqi progress becomes yet another reason to question the war effort.

[O]ther lawmakers say they want to see the high costs of the war defrayed by Iraq dipping into its own oil revenues, which are projected to be substantial. Independent auditors estimate that Iraq is headed this year toward a massive surplus because of as much as $60 billion in oil revenues - a consequence of increased production paired with the sharp rise in prices.

"It's totally unacceptable to me that we are spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq while they are putting tens of billions of dollars in banks around the world from oil revenues," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "It doesn't compute as far as I'm concerned."

Administration and military officials say Baghdad hasn't been able to spend its oil revenues so far because the newly formed government is still learning how to manage its revenues. They say Iraq's lack of spending isn't due to corruption or laziness, but rather Baghdad's inability to determine where its money is needed most and how to allocate it efficiently.

The Iraqis have a "genuine mechanical problem in drawing up national budgets (and) executing those budgets, particularly when it comes to capital infrastructure," said David Satterfield, the State Department's senior adviser on Iraq. But, he added, the government is improving with time and should be able to do more in the months to come.

The Defense Science Board has issued a report that appears to be a source for the article.

TONIGHT'S RAILROAD READING. Econobrowser's James Hamilton honors his late father-in-law, John E. Flavin, jr.

If this were a proper eulogy, I'd write about all of Jack's life-- his service as a captain in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, his very successful career as a chemical engineer for Eastman Kodak, his four children (one of whom I married). But this is something more personal, based on my own interaction with Jack during his last year, after he and my mother-in-law moved out to San Diego so that my wife Marjorie and I could help out a little better.

Jack's last year was not an easy one. Everything was becoming increasingly difficult, and he came to spend most of his time in front of the TV watching nothing in particular. Margie and I were trying to figure out what we could do to bring some richness and meaning back to his life.

Our last inspiration was based on Jack's childhood hobby-- model trains. They still had a big collection of these packed up in boxes in the garage. Margie and I spent several weekends moving furniture around and constructing a big table that might serve as a train room.

We thought of it as a long shot-- Jack was losing interest in so much-- but it seemed worth giving it a try.

The project turned out far more successfully than we had dreamed. Jack returned to the hobby with his boyhood passion, and spent almost all of his time in the room that was now all his. He threw his energy into painting the table and organizing the layout. He was quite enthusiastic about attending the model train exhibition that was coming to the Del Mar Fairgrounds in January. But congestive heart failure left him too weak for that last planned trip.

I had an odd thought as I reflected in late December on the past year. In thinking about the various things I'd attempted and accomplished during the year, personally and professionally, the one of which I was most proud was that train room.

With pictures. (Via Econ Log).

THERE ARE SOME PARTS OF NEW YORK I WOULDN'T INVADE. It's one of the moderately memorable lines from Casablanca, and this commentary on the battle of Basra suggests there's logic to it.

Sometime during my four years of traveling to Iraq, I developed a recurring dream in which a Middle Eastern country invades the United States and occupies, among other places, my old neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. The dream flashed briefly through my mind on Thursday as I walked the dirty, broken streets of Sadr City, a teeming Baghdad slum that forms the power base of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric.

Here is what happens in the dream: Because I know a little Arabic, I somehow find myself a translator for the invaders, even as some of my Chicago buddies are in the alleys plotting against my employers. And each night when I walk home along my beloved Dearborn Street under the rusty elevated tracks and past the White Hen grocery store, I wonder what the guys poring over maps in their armored vehicles plan to accomplish against a few million South Siders fighting in their own alleys. That’s usually when I wake up.

That dream, a nightmare, really, flashed through my mind as I stood at the end of a filthy, pothole-riddled alley talking with a small-time deputy commander in the Mahdi Army, the militia that is the armed wing of Mr. Sadr’s political movement. Standing there with his arms folded over his potbelly as his fighters scurried about behind him, the man who called himself Riadh, 34 years old, was effectively deputy commander of an alley.

“We can’t face the armored tanks of the Americans face to face, because all we have is light guns,” he said. “So we just wait for a chance to attack something.”

He could be dead now, because the next day at least one American helicopter swooped over Sadr City and engaged in a gun battle that killed four, according to American military officials, although Iraqi police put the toll much higher. Or the potbellied deputy could still be out there, plotting his next move. Either way, before dismissing the ragtag Mahdi fighters, it would be well to remember that — partly because the alleys of the neighborhoods they control are too narrow for the Iraqi Army’s armored vehicles — Mahdi units like Riadh’s have been fighting Iraq’s federal forces to a standstill in Basra, the country’s southern port city, for nearly a week now.

Alleys: they are dangerous only when used by those who grew up in them. That is the basic reason Mr. Sadr and his fighters simply will not go away in this war.

Via Ezra Klein.

Because U.S. policy distinguishes Baathists and terrorists of various stripes from sui generis Iraqis, the tactic of making of Basra what Zhukov and Koniev made of Berlin in 1945 is not available. That tactic, by the way, was later second-guessed by Soviet commanders: there's a footnote in one of the histories of World War II to the effect that Stalin's insistence on sacking Berlin led to avoidable Red Army deaths at the hands of what the source referred to as "crazy Nazi kids."

A HUMP DAY SPRECHER. Why Major League Baseball would schedule opening day between a team with an open air stadium and a team with a movable roof stadium at the open air stadium, during the end of the snow season, escapes me, but I did get a kick out of hearing "Let's Go Brewers" from the fans who made the road trip and stayed to the final out. (These were the only fans in the stadium at the final out, and the Milwaukee radio picked the chant up five by five.) Hoist that Lima flag, Cubs. Tonight I hoist a Black Bavarian.