WHERE WERE PENN STATE'S PROFESSORS?

University Diaries chastises the faculty at Penn State for not reining in the football program.

When professors get together they are very powerful. Where were Penn State’s professors when… Well, whenever?

Specifically,

Not only did the Penn State professors – displaying real degeneracy, franchement – just look the other way as their school turned into a cult of personality. Not one of them opened their trap to say… I mean, you don’t even have to write an essay! Just say you’re embarrassed! Just complain to the school paper now and then!

I suppose.  On the other hand, how much muscle have professors exercised against the intrusions of the assessment weenies or the cultural studies grievance-mongers on the curriculum, and on faculty hiring?

SAIL ON THE LIFTED TACK.

Apparently the Olympics aren't enough sports for the summer.  Thus comes the ESPN Body Issue.  Among this year's models (not surprisingly, much of the U.S. volleyball team will participate) is Laser sailor Anna Tunnicliffe.

Steven Lippman photo for ESPN courtesy Daily Mail.

Ms Tunnicliffe sails for the U.S.  She's a native of Doncaster, but doesn't race Flying Scots.

The Daily Mail has its own preview of the issue.

THE NURTURANT PARENT IS THE NANNY.

Berkeley linguist George Lakoff has, for a long time, attempted to help Democrats get elected by suggesting the Democrats change their message.  He recently used his status as a well-regarded linguist to assist a Democrat operative with the latest guidelines for talking points.  Zombie at Pajamas Media has time to read the guidelines, and comment.

Lakoff does something throughout the book which he must think is very clever, but which is completely transparent to the reader, making for a truly cringe-worthy experience. Lakoff has two public personas: First, he is a scientist; and second, he is a partisan political advocate. He understands that when he speaks as a partisan, we the readers necessarily take what he says with a grain of salt; but when he speaks as a scientist, we are expected to accept his statements as objective truth. Throughout the book, he constantly switches back and forth between the two personas: He’ll speak for a paragraph or two as a liberal activist advising Democratic candidates and pundits, then he’ll take off that hat and put on the linguist hat to say something “official”; then switch back to his liberal hat, and so on. I guess the temptation was too great to resist abusing this dual role, because he makes a habit — a career, actually — of putting on his scientist hat and then making partisan statements, which he passes off as impartial facts. I can only imagine that he thinks he’s getting away with it, but the gambit is so glaringly obvious that it makes you almost embarrassed for the guy.

Quite so. More to the point, Zombie suggests, conservative and Republican court intellectuals are quite willing to take the latest frame and mock it.  Or take it seriously.

There’s a new frame in town: The nanny state. In a masterful maneuver of political aikido, conservatives have taken Lakoff’s antediluvian “strict father conservatism” frame and completely reversed it. Conservatism now stands for freedom from authority, while is it progressivism that seeks to implement the new scolding parent metaphor, now known as the “nanny state.” It’s liberals who want to tell you what to do and what is allowed, not conservatives.

And this frame is widely accepted by the general public not simply because of superior conservative messaging, but because there is evidence backing it up. It is mostly liberal politicians, not conservative politicians, who pass laws and regulations telling citizens what they can and cannot do, what they must and must not buy, what they are and are not allowed to say.

Who seeks to impose the “strict parent” paradigm now? Liberals. And everyone knows it. Yet still there’s George Lakoff off by his lonesome still pounding his fists about “strict father conservatives.” All the rhetoric in the world can’t hide the fact that conservatism now stands for unintrusive small government, and that progressivism stands for intrusive big government. The “nanny state” frame is so powerful and self-evidently true that it can’t be ignored away, and can’t be euphemized away.

Nurturant Parents don't let their children buy Big Gulps, q.e.d.

SEPARATING EQUILIBRIUM.

The Hoover Institute's Amy Wax (via Newmark's Door) questions the effectiveness of mixing poor and rich children in common schools.

Urban minorities and, increasingly, less-educated whites suffer from chaotic families and dislocations occasioned by low achievement, high unemployment, and poor socialization. As Brad Wilcox and Don Peck have recently noted, even the white middle class has fractured into segments defined by education. An alarming fault line has emerged between white college graduates and those without a degree, with the latter increasingly resembling high school dropouts in their rising rates of financial distress, family disintegration, single parenting, partner conflict, and behaviorally troubled children. Well-off, better-educated suburbanites, despite embracing the ethos of tolerance and diversity, mostly stick to the 1950s script. Their lives are characterized by family stability, low rates of criminality, and a devotion to work and schooling. Despite the depredations of popular culture, their standards of decorum remain relatively strict and they do a good job of socializing their children.

Advocates of pooling recognize the phenomenon, yet are reluctant to grasp the likely consequences.

In the end, [Virginia law professor James] Ryan cannot avoid confronting the fact that, as developmental psychologist Richard Nisbett states in Intelligence and How to Get It, “lower  ses [socioeconomic status] children are more likely to have behavior problems, which are disruptive to one degree or another for all who have to deal with such children.” And indeed Ryan does concede, albeit skittishly, that disadvantaged students are more likely to hold dysfunctional attitudes or display disruptive behaviors. He refers, for example, to black adolescents’ “opposition to conventional middle class white values,” and to the problems of dealing with “loud, obnoxious, poorly behaved, low income African American students.” But Ryan knows that frank talk of such behavioral deficits indulges stereotypes and fits uneasily with the liberal zeitgeist. Not surprisingly, his approach to the topic is riddled with mea culpas, disclaimers, contradictions, and evasions. He simultaneously deplores the “prejudice” against urban schools as expressed in “stereotypical assumptions about urban minorities” and relies on those very stereotypes — and the functional superiority of the bourgeois folkways that characterize predominantly white suburban schools — to justify his income integration project.

The article notes that well-off parents who want good academic outcomes for their children will self-segregate, either by moving house or paying private school tuitions. Thus the private response to a public policy.

Left unsaid, though, is the root cause of social separation.  As long as there are Thinking People who view convention as a social construction, rather than an evolutionarily stable strategy, and Trendy People who celebrate transgressiveness for its own sake, and in spite of possible cost, there will be no policy to achieve integration of the common schools on the basis of wealth or income.  On the other hand, there might be some potential for common schools, even in tough neighborhoods, to inculcate bourgeois values, that is, once administrators and social theorists get over their identity-politics tics.

CHOO, CHOO, CHOO GOES THE TROLLEY?

A Chicago Tribune feature on Duneland describes the South Shore Line as the dunes country choo-choo.

While most motorists are accustomed to sharing the road with bicycles, few have ever had the odd experience of sharing the street with a train. In only a smattering of American towns do the train tracks run right down the main drag. In even fewer do suitcase-toting folks board a passenger train as automobile drivers wait patiently alongside.

Yet in Michigan City, the strange sight of trains stopping for traffic signals beside motorists is an everyday occurrence as the rail cars of the historic South Shore Line travel between Chicago and its eastern terminus at the airport in South Bend.

That's the Interurban Tradition.

The article suggests that readers disembark at Beverly Shores for Dune Park.

Chicago Tribune photo by Keri Wiginton.

In addition to Dune Park, there are five prototype houses built for the 1933 Century of Progress whose owners allow an architectural tour, once a year in October.

I suppose that if journalists stop using steam-era descriptions of trains by, oh, 2061, that, too, will be a century of progress.

SUMMER IS FOR CATCHING UP ON MY READING.

The Fifty Book Challenge is still going strong, and a number of the new members are well past their annual targets already.  There's still a possibility of making the half century by year's end.  The links at the dates point to the reviews posted at the Challenge.  Some books are particularly good (+) and others, particularly bad (-).

10. The Renaissance of American Steel, 23 April 2012 (+).
11. Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year, 29 April 2012 (+).
12. Lightning War: Blitzkrieg in the West, 1940, 30 April 2012.
13. Generations: The History of America's Future, 7 May 2012.
14. The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: The Methods and Mysteries of the World's Greatest Detective, 20 May 2012.
15. To Make Men Free, 27 May 2012.
16. The Faculty Lounges, 6 June 2012 (-).
17. A Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh, 10 June 2012.
18. A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, 18 June 2012.
19. End This Depression Now!, 24 June 2012.
20. The Hoarder in You: How to Lead a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life, 28 June 2012.
21. Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, 29 June 2012.
22. I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next To a Republican, 30 June 2012.

The first quarter report is available at Cold Spring Shops or the European Tribune or the Fifty Book Challenge.

The bookworm continues to grow.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Cross-posted to European Tribune and Fifty Book Challenge.

SPEAKING OF CORRECTIVE TAXES.

In Houston, the Pigou Club is a strip club that collects a pole tax.

The City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday that requires strip clubs to pay a $5-per-visitor fee to help pay for the analysis of biological evidence collected from rape victims in hopes of identifying their attackers.

Police in Houston, and in many other parts of the U.S., lack the money to promptly analyze evidence such as hair particles and blood specimens, gathered by investigators in packets known as rape kits. Houston estimates it has 6,000 rape kits that have yet to be scrutinized by crime laboratories.

Supporters of the ordinance, which was supported by Mayor Annise Parker and approved on a 14-1 vote, contend that strip clubs should shoulder some of the costs of rape investigations because the establishments can cultivate unhealthy attitudes toward women that can lead to sexual assaults.

"There are negative secondary effects associated with adult-entertainment establishments," said Ellen Cohen, the council member who championed the ordinance, which could generate up to $3 million in annual revenue.

The fee would also apply to clubs that stage occasional adult entertainment, such as "a wet T-shirt contest or naked sushi contest," according to the ordinance, which states all the revenue is to go toward processing rape kits.

There are an estimated 30 clubs subject to the tax, according to Ms. Cohen's chief of staff.

Critics strongly question attempts to tie strip clubs to violence against women, calling the fee unfair. "There is no known correlation between people going to nice, high-end gentlemen's clubs and rape," said Albert Van Huff, a Houston lawyer who represents local strip clubs.

A 2009 report by the University of Texas at Austin concluded that no study has "authoritatively linked alcohol, sexually oriented businesses, and the perpetration of violence."

In Texas, a state law passed in 2007 already imposes a $5-per-customer charge, dubbed the "pole tax," on strip clubs around the state. A portion of the fee, which has so far generated about $15.7 million in revenue, can be used to pay for testing rape kits.

Is the tax based on a benefit principle, or on ability to pay, and what sorts of research papers might be forthcoming after a few years of experience with these taxes?

OPPORTUNITY COSTS.

Chicago Union Station must not yet be prime Loop real estate.

Amtrak has moved its Chicago office employees back into the building, partially occupying the second and third floors, which saves more than $2 million in annual rent.

Amtrak might not be writing checks to some other landowner any more, but it is foregoing the opportunity to rent out space in the office tower at Union Station to somebody else.  There are a lot of somebodies still to identify themselves.

Amtrak is working with Jones Lang LaSalle, the building’s property manager, to market the rest of the available office space and 60,000 square feet of upgraded retail space surrounding the Great Hall.

To think that the Concourse Building went for a trading floor that has subsequently been converted to a gym.  The idea in the late 1960s was that the railroads could profitably disinvest in passenger facilities and scale back the station facilities to something more suitable to commuters passing between work and train with all deliberate speed.  Live and learn.

A CUSHY BILLET, BEHIND ENEMY LINES.

Some years ago, literary type Harry Stein was mugged by reality sufficiently many times to pen How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, which made it into the Cold Spring Shops library before the Fifty Book Challenge began.  More recently, he wrote I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next To a Republican, in which he relates some of his experiences as the sole, or perhaps most vocal, dissenting voice from the Blue State Smug.  There's enough substance in it to evade the proscription of polemical material and offer a very brief Book Review N^o. 22.  The simplest way to understand the book is to consider the possibility that a Pauline Kael could be surprised with a Richard Nixon victory because either Pauline Kael's social world is as circumscribed as Mr Stein suggests it is, or because Pauline Kael's friends have marginalized by their scorn those people who might agree with the intellectual Right, or have persuaded those people who suggest those righties have a point to keep still.  That point, expressed most succinctly, might have been made by Madison radio talker Vicki McKenna, who gets props from Mr Stein for expressing dissenting views from within one of the citadels of Political Correctness.  Turn to page 126.

We start a brand new class in the public schools, running from kindergarten all the way through high school.  It's called "Middle Class Values."  And Mom's got to take the class, too -- because she fails to understand what deferred gratification is.

Once upon a time, the common schools implicitly did that -- that is, until the cultural studies types decided that "privileging" the mode of behavior of successful people had more negative than positive effects.  By their fruits shall ye know them.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

FIRST AND SECOND 98.

Sounds like a pair of redball freight trains, but it's a reference to the kind of wind velocities Friday's pair of derechos achieved while making the kind of time across country an express train could make if it didn't have to stop for crew changes or 500 mile inspections.

The first one got organized in eastern Iowa and it produced some interesting looking clouds in northern Illinois.

That colorful clutter in the lower middle of the picture is a bounce-house.  Look closely and you'll see somebody hustling to mow the grass before the rain hits.  The bounce-house was well enough secured to serve at a birthday party this afternoon.  Lots of tots running around enjoying themselves.

The second one came through just after sunset.  A train's schedule is valid for twelve hours, and this second one was about ten hours behind the first.

National Weather Service image (thanks Phil!)

Cold Spring Shops headquarters are somewhere under that little blue blob just west of Chicago.  Lots of lightning announcing itself, but most of that went north or south.  There was enough rain to fill the rain barrel.  The second section never got to be as big or as destructive as the first section, which, in this picture, is causing havoc at the University Diaries main base.

AROUND THE ROCKIES, NOT THROUGH THEM.

Amtrak's California Zephyr reverts to its historic California Service routing.

The [Pine Ridge] fire is burning in six-mile long Debeque Canyon, 60 miles west of Glenwood Springs, Colo. on the Zephyr’s former Denver & Rio Grande Western route. The trains will be routed over the Union Pacific’s Overland Route through Green River, Wyo., and Ogden, Utah.

Note: that fire is on the other side of the Continental Divide from the more widely-covered Estes Park and Colorado Springs fires.

THE POVERTY OF CULTURAL STUDIES.

Cornell historian Jefferson Cowie attempts, in Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, to come to terms with the end of the World War II New Industrial State and the propensity of blue collars to cause red necks.  I exaggerate, but only slightly.  The book is a different perspective on blue-collar politics from those proposed by Thomas Frank or by Richard Longworth.  Although Professor Cowie takes pains to assure readers that working-class is not equivalent to organized labor, the book we read switches among Presidential politics, Big Union politics, and perusal of songs and movies by Big Entertainment, particularly those directed by Big Entertainers who might have been red-diaper babies.  Book Review N^o. 21 will consider, at length, the ways in which Stayin' Alive tells readers more about the intellectual failures of the last forty years of post-everything in cultural studies, and perhaps in the academy generally, than it does about the difficulties confronting blue-collar workers.

A RAIL CITY, WITHOUT RAILROADS.

Midwestern ferroequinologists know the significance of Butler Yard to the Chicago and North Western.  Butler Yard, however, is not in the corporate limits of Butler.  That doesn't stop Union Pacific from recognizing Butler as Wisconsin's first Train Town, USA, part of the carrier's sesquicentennial festivities.

TWO SYSTEMS OF BELIEF.

Very similar inferences, all the same.  Michael Moore:

John Roberts, not only joined with the liberal justices to completely uphold almost every single part of the Obama health care law, he wrote the majority opinion himself! In fact, he went even further. When he realized that the government had poorly made its constitutional case to the court, he went searching for a clause in their argument and the constitution that would give him the justification he needed to back the administration and to insure that his decision would hold up legally. In other words, even though he is on the opposite side of the political fence, he wrote the Dems' paper for them. Stunning.

Rush Limbaugh:

Other than the four liberals, they all knew the whole thing was unconstitutional and Justice Roberts decided to rewrite it. He rewrote the legislation in a way that Congress never intended it. It would be like a judge making up for an incompetent lawyer in court and finding somebody who's guilty totally innocent just because the judge wanted to appear magnanimous. Or vice versa. It makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income.

Read further into the columns, however, and you'll see very different proposals for what has to be done now that the Chief Justice has done the legislature's homework for them.

MARGINAL OR INFRAMARGINAL, PECUNIARY OR NONPECUNIARY?

George Leef questions the spillover benefits of higher education subsidies. Knowledge and skills are not public goods even though some people in society benefit from them.  The focus of his discussion is on how much of the spillover can be captured as a private benefit to the investor in human capital.

What especially raised [the Century Foundation's Richard] Kahlenberg’s hackles was that [Chicago finance professor Luigi] Zingales “conceptualizes higher education as an almost purely private good.” Bad idea, Kahlenberg says, because “we are all ‘beneficiaries’ to some extent when other members of society are better educated.”

Kahlenberg’s idea is one of those progressive shibboleths that sound so nice that they usually go unchallenged. We need to challenge it. Is it true that we all benefit when people become “better educated” and if so, does it follow that government ought to fund higher education in whole or in part?

Let’s start by drawing a distinction between training and education.  People spend time and money to develop competencies in producing goods and services, in return for which they expect to be paid. People learn how to do surgery, how to install drywall, how to fix computers, how to sell insurance, how to write novels, how to teach English, and countless other kinds of work. Some of their training may be done in formal education settings, but much of it occurs on the job.

Because they intend to use their skills to make a living, individuals have a very strong incentive to find the optimal degree of training. The government does not need to intervene to tell a lawyer, for example, that she ought to become better trained. She will figure out the point at which the cost of additional study and training exceeds the benefit from it.

The same is true for all other professions and occupations. People will invest in the “human capital” needed to succeed in a field, weighing costs and benefits to find the optimal point. There is no need to subsidize their investments.

The gravamen of Mr Leef's argument is that a classroom and an on-the job environment are equivalent in developing human capital.  In the case of lawyering, that may not be the case, depending on the propensity of the apprentice's mentor to instill an understanding of professional ethics as limits to be pushed, or as constraints, the respect of which makes the services of the lawyer more valuable.  To grant that possibility, however, does not imply a public benefit to be captured through public subsidies to the law colleges.

In short, there is no need for government subsidies for training. Think back to the time before any such subsidies. In colonial America, the people had access to highly skilled workers, craftsmen, and professionals. The government’s role: none at all.

So, what about education?  Let’s say that education comprises all the non-training aspects of college: learning to write a good essay, learning about history, about our culture, about science and scientific method, about mathematics, about literature, and so on. Isn’t society better off if more people absorb more of all that?

Again, the individuals who absorb that learning may be better off. A student, Pete, who takes a good college course on, say, British literature, may very well benefit. Perhaps he uses his knowledge to impress a girlfriend; perhaps to get a question right on Jeopardy; perhaps to enlighten others and recommend fine books.  Pete benefits from his education and some others probably do, too. It’s a prodigious stretch, however, to say that society benefits. Good for Pete that he chose to spend his time and money learning about literature, but there is no reason why the citizens at large should be taxed to help him pay for it.

Yes and no. On the one hand, in the colonial era the craftsmen began their career as apprentices, in an institutional arrangement inherited from the guilds -- themselves state-sanctioned monopolies -- and perhaps the financial aid for the apprentice was in the form of an indenture -- an outcome Mr Kahlenberg fears, although one that his essay draws unsupported analogies to.  On the other hand, perhaps the spillover benefits are a product of elementary school, and sociopathic aspiring lawyers and hedge fund managers received inadequate development of their consciences from an early age.

SUPPLANTING THE NIELSEN RATINGS?

The local newspaper is looking for ways to enhance sponsorships.

When readers first visit HuskieWire.com, they will see our home page as usual. But when clicking on the first headline, readers will be asked a question such as, “Do you drink pop?” Readers also may be asked to “Like” the story on Facebook.

By performing either of these quick actions, the full story will appear. The survey is part of our continued exploration into how we can work with internet companies such as Google.

The survey question will be displayed only on the first story the reader views. Readers will be asked to answer only one simple survey every 24 hours. All surveys will be completely anonymous, and Google will not use any data collected for their own ad targeting.

Not yet.

I suppose it's less intrusive than having to register or buy a subscription for online content.

THE VALUE OF DE-ACCESSIONING ITEMS.

One of the occupational hazards of reading things for a living is that books and papers accumulate.  One of the realities of doing the work of several people in an era of downsizing is that time to clear out the excess is hard come by or put to other uses, such as maintaining a web journal.  Thus comes Robin Zasio, the staff psychologist for A&E's Hoarders, and her The Hoarder in You: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life.  Book Review N^o. 20: sneak up on the task, clear it out a little at a time.  If you're considering the book as a nudge to a friend or family member whose housekeeping skills you find deficient, read it first.  Will it earn a place on the shelf and contribute to the hoard library?  Probably not.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

NOT PHOTOSHOPPED

The Germans are working on a new kind of trackless trolley.

Siemens AG photo courtesy Destination: Freedom.

The article notes there's nothing new in an electrically-powered road vehicle, although those current collectors are a bit much.

So-called “trackless trolleys” – passenger buses operated electrically with double overhead lines to supply the power – are in operation in many cities including Seattle, San Francisco, the Ruhr region in northwestern Germany, Switzerland, and dozens of other locations around the world for many decades. But Siemens idea is to electrify one lane of a limited access highway for powering trucks. The trucks are equipped with a double pantograph current collector, somewhat similar to modern trains except there are two of them side-by-side. The trucks themselves are dual-mode, they can interchangeably drive from electric power or the usual diesel engine. The goal is to eliminate diesel exhaust emissions from trucks on major highways in urban areas. Los Angeles and several other cities are reportedly looking seriously at Siemens proposal.

Regular readers know there are trackless trolleys -- in Milwaukee locution, trolley buses -- in the Cold Spring Shops.

Destination: Freedom goes on with a suggestion.

The added costs of electric / diesel trucks is anyone’s guess, perhaps $20,000 per vehicle, maybe less, or possibly far more. It all begs the question, if you want to move freight through urban environments using electric power, maybe an invention that dates backs over 100 years and today is in widespread use on five or six continents is perhaps the way to go. What is this century-old invention that efficiently eliminates engine exhaust emissions caused by moving many tons of freight through heavily populated areas? The electrified railroad.

The proper locution is "raises the question," not "begs the question". Nitpicking aside, this is what an electrified intermodal train looks like.

Charles Anderson photograph courtesy Stan's RailPix.

Mantua, Pennsylvania, May 1958.

You'd have to raise that catenary a few feet to clear stack trains, although The Pennsylvania Railroad and Penn Central did handle autoracks on the Northeast Corridor.

WHEN THE INCOME EFFECT SWAMPS THE SUBSTITUTION EFFECT.

Cold Spring Shops has long maintained that emergent worker behavior will lead to shorter working hours and getting off the 24/7 treadmill. "Whether your model of behavior is "Going Galt" or "Take This Job and Shove It", the resistance grows." Here's a report from the front lines of Manhattan, likely to be the last refuge of the frenetic striver.

Perhaps people are looking around at the intensity of how we work and are constantly connected and are taking a step back wanting to simplify and enjoy their life through something that they are truly passionate about.  I am not so sure we are slowing down but we are shifting.  We are moving into the next generation post-2008 when the world imploded.  We might be slowly coming out of that time but the economy, the Internet, the world is a very different place.  The changes are subtle now but in a few years we will see them more intensely as the generation graduating from college now makes their mark on the world and the ones jumping off their career paths.

And you have to love the graphic that accompanies the post.

Image from Gotham Gal.

Her post elaborates on the discovery by the bosses' newspaper of tired people pushing back, right under their noses.

Single professionals report going to extremes to manage non-work duties—buying extra socks and sheets to avoid doing laundry, cooking and freezing 20 meals at once to save time or jamming two or three workouts into the weekend to try to stay in shape.

A 37-year-old New Jersey project consultant with an active social life says she faces piles of dirty dishes, laundry and unanswered mail when she gets home each evening, and she can't get started on important financial planning.

Note: singles. This isn't your standard Two-Income Trap or lack of family friendly policies stuff, this is burning out your human capital, plain and simple. And the human capital is beginning to decide that, recession jobless recovery or no, it's not worth it, despite emergent attempts of employers to let workers have a life.

As pressure to increase sales kept mounting, "I was really becoming more irritable," avoiding social activities, [onetime ad-sales representative Craig Ellwanger] says. Battling insomnia, he stopped seeing friends and stayed home alone on weekends, watching football on TV and putting off laundry, grocery shopping and paying bills. Although he normally relishes cooking, he reverted to dining on ramen noodles.

Finally in January, he quit, telling himself, "I've got to do this before I go crazy."

A microeconomist's take on the economic recovery: watch the separations statistics. It's likely that a lot of workers are putting up with being on call all the time out of the fear that the only thing worse than being overworked is being out of work. But as those green shoots develop and hiring picks up, watch for people using their exit option.

It's also encouraging that employers are recognizing the folly of protecting their workers who are parents because they expect the single people to cover for them.

Many employers have added "work-life benefits," such as flexible scheduling and personal time off, in an effort to keep all kinds of employees happy, with and without kids and spouses.

But the benefits only go so far. Heavy workloads keep many employees from using them. And for men and women alike, some managers still assume singles don't have anything to do but work and pile on extra duties and projects, according to research by Wendy Casper, an associate professor of management at the University of Texas at Arlington.

It might be the case that some of those single people work as a way of separating themselves from the pack. On the other hand, observers of workplace dynamics might want to look for pushback from single employees asked to cover so that a colleague can get to a soccer match, or, more deliciously, divorce court.

SCHOOL FAILURE IS NOT FOR A LACK OF MONEY.

Former union representative and playwright David Macaray thinks he's arguing against teacher-bashing and standardized tests. Read carefully, though, and he's identifying the real problem with students not getting all they could out of school.

Nearly everyone regretted the exact same thing.  They regretted they hadn’t been better students—and not just in high school, but all the way back to elementary school.  These good people regretted that they hadn’t been more mature, that they hadn’t applied themselves more diligently, that they hadn’t paid attention in class, and that they hadn’t buckled down and done their assigned homework.  They more or less regretted their entire attitude toward education.

And while I’m not suggesting that this informal survey was in any way “conclusive,” the difference in responses between men and women was nonetheless surprising.  Virtually every man I spoke to blamed himself for his deficiency.  He readily acknowledged that in elementary school all he did was watch TV and goof off, and that by the time he reached high school he was more interested in girls and cars and sports than school work.

Gosh, did those young men arrive at school without the habits of the middle class, and did the schools do nothing to suggest that acquiring those habits might matter? Notice: although the essay disaggregates responses by sex, the responses of the females do not differ in ways that might support a war-on-boys interpretation of the troubles the males had.

But while the women also regretted that they, too, hadn’t applied themselves, their assessment differed a bit from the men’s.  Women were more willing to fault their parents (particularly their mothers) for not having dogged them enough.  They were critical of their mothers for not having sufficiently “pushed” them to be good students, and for not having “had higher [academic] expectations” for them.

It didn’t seem that any of these women (most of whom were late thirties or older) were especially bitter, or were playing the martyr card, or were using their moms as scapegoats.  What they were doing was simply looking back on their lives and candidly recalling that a lack of parental-imposed motivation and discipline had hindered them academically.

In any event, here’s the kicker.  Not one of them blamed their teachers.

Perhaps not, but when the mothers didn't develop the cultural capital of their girls, why not?  Did the mothers' schooling neglect the development of cultural capital, because doing so was oppressive?