THE END OF BUSINESS AS USUAL.

Reason's Nick Gillespie identifies the fruits by which we know the Democrats and Republicans.

When you look at what each party has wrought just in the 21st century alone, the only real question is why the Dems or Reps have any members left? Separately, they pushed (among other things) Medicare expansion, Obamacare, No Child Left Behind, massive, unwarranted, and ongoing expansions in food stamps, disability spending, drone srikes, losing wars, immigration deportations, and huge piles of debt. All while demonizing the other party and only getting together every couple of years to work around spending caps that were put in place because they couldn't get it together to write and pass annual budgets.

If we are lucky as a country, we are just a few more debates away from Trump and Sanders pushing party identification into the single digits—they are the only two candidates who are throwing off any sort of energy and interest but they are also genuinely unpopular with anyone other than primary voters, who already represent a dead-end mind-set in American politics. By presenting unapologetic, cartoon versions of what their parties-of-convenience stand for, they are revealing to all of us that the Democratic and Republican parties need to reboot themselves every bit as much as the Spider-Man movie franchise does.

Looking ahead, though, Mr Gillespie might still be seeing too rosy a future.

As currently constituted, neither party can reliably represent a country that is getting more and more socially liberal and fiscally conservative. In a word, a country that is increasingly libertarian in what it demands from government: Less intrusion into everyday life and better spending of tax dollars. If and when the parties decide they are serious about changing their platforms to better reflect more Americans, each might consider moving toward that libertarian center not for ideological reasons but for pragmatic ones.

Perhaps, but Mr Trump and Mr Sanders are filling beer halls with constituents who expect to live at the expense of others (Mexico pays for the wall!  Universal free college!) and accordingly giving rent seekers yuge opportunities to continue to suck at the public teat.

In a related column, Mr Gillespie seems to get this.

If it’s true that Trump and Sanders are the only candidates throwing off sparks, it’s worth underscoring that they are not genuinely popular among Americans writ large. Rather, they are generating intense responses among the shrinking ranks of partisans and dead-enders who respond to what they think are purer and purer distillations of what the parties really should stand for. As fewer and fewer of us choose to identify as Republicans and Democrats, those that still do will get harder- and harder-core until the number of true believers approaches zero.

The best possible outcome, dear reader, might well be continued gridlock.

CREATING A LAP.

The first maxim of safe railroad operation is that two trains not be allowed to occupy the same section of track at the same time.  There are all sorts of ways to ensure this, the simplest of which involves the use of a timetable, and the only necessary technology is synchronized watches.  Let us review the purpose of the timetable.  "Note, in railroading, that a timetable does not REQUIRE a train to be at a station at the specified time. Rather, it means that the train will not be BEYOND that station BEFORE that time."

In the course of reporting on the Bad Aibling interurban collision, I became involved in an instructive (now closed) discussion on this article, in the course of which a participant cited the normal timetable. The wreck occurred during the morning rush hour.

The 6:37 train from Rosenheim to Holzkirchen arrives Kolbermoor 6:40 and should depart 6:45 AFTER the 6:10 Holzkirchen to Rosenheim train arrives Kolbermoor 6:44.

The Rosenheim bound train was delayed but unfortunately the Holzkirchen bound train did not wait and departed on time.

Here's where the failure of the signalling system, whether by accident, or by deliberate error, arises.

Under normal procedure, the Holzkirchen train will not be BEYOND Kolbermoor before 6:45.

Under North American timetable and train order operation, the dispatcher can hold the Rosenheim train at Bad Aibling for the Holzkirchen train.  With centralized traffic control, it's even easier.  Provided the Rosenheim train has not yet accepted the signal at Bad Aibling, he simply takes away the Bad Aibling to Kolbermoor section, and clears the route from Kolbermoor into an open track at Bad Aibling.  The circuitry prevents conflicting routes to be set.

And yet, two trains occupied conflicting routes. Investigators are now alleging human error.

An investigation has now been opened into the actions of the controller who was in charge of the stretch of track in Bad Aibling south-east of Munich on the day of the fatal crash.

If the controller “had acted according to the rules and according to his duty, the collision would not have happened,” lead prosecutor Wolfgang Giese said in press conference held on Tuesday afternoon.

"There is no evidence of technical problems... Our investigation shows that this was human error with catastrophic consequences," he added.

Authority to run Rosenheim to Bad Aibling laps authority to run Bad Aibling to Rosenheim.  Broken trains and dead people.  It's a lesson as old as railroading.  The Crusty Chief Dispatcher continues to teach it.

A CONSERVATIVE POSTURE TOWARD HIGHER EDUCATION.

In Glock and Man at Mount St. Mary's, Daniel J. Flynn correctly characterizes embattled president Simon "I'll drown the bunnies, and the tenured faculty too" Newman as a college president in over his big head.

A true liberal arts education in what Matthew Arnold described as “the best which has been thought and said” equips young people with the tools to govern their souls and their society. This instruction, once dubbed the education fit for a king, must fit for everybody in a nation governed by millions of people, as Mortimer Adler pointed out more than a half century ago. The world needs educated graduates who know how to think rather than trained ones told what to think.

The Nicomachean Ethics and Measure for Measure do a better job in instructing souls and citizens than computer programming. We need the latter; more so do computer programmers need Aristotle and Shakespeare. Their eternal quality beats the ephemeral education the big man on campus pushes in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Capitalists err in running businesses like charities, donating shareholder money to causes and campaigns. A related mistake sees capitalists running charities like businesses. Tenure, shared governance, freedom of speech, and other features of campus life make it impossible for a college president to govern, at least for long, as a dictatorial CEO. And if he does, he opens the school to expensive lawsuits, ridicule in national newspapers, and the ensuing scorn from prospective students, quality faculty, and donors.

Precisely.

THIS IS WHAT MAKING PROGRESS LOOKS LIKE.

In the New York Post, Kyle Smith takes stock of the fractured polity.

As President Obama prepares to carefully fasten his bike helmet and ride off into the sunset, how do we know his presidency has been a total failure?

Because even liberals say so. The famous thrill going up their legs (in the words of Chris Matthews) is now forming a cold, embarrassing puddle in their shoes. There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton, campaigning as the guarantor of Obama’s third term, just got smoked by a kooky geriatric. Bernie Sanders is catching on in part because he tacitly concedes that Obama has been a dud.

“We voted for hope and change, Mr. President, but what did we get?” asks progressive radio host Bill Press, a longtime voice of the left on CNN shows such as “Crossfire,” in his new book “Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down” (Threshold Editions).

The answers are saddening: “stagnant wages, a struggling middle class, rising income inequality and a diminished social safety net.”

Ouch.

And yes, in the most recent Democratic debate, it still sounded like the candidates were running against fifteen years of Herbert Hoover.

URBAN OR SUBURBAN EMERGENCE. NONCONVEXITIES COME LATER.

Political economy is all about trade-offs.  That's even the case when something happens that appears to be for the good, as this children's primer on urban evolution from Place Makers notes.

I was pondering yet again the many challenges we presently face that are rooted in our urban renaissance, and how vexing it is that something generally perceived as a net-positive can still carry with it no shortage of downsides and externalities.

In short, no scheme, no policy, no market trend, no infrastructure deployed will correct everything absolutely. They all contribute. Hopefully positively, but always incrementally. And always, it seems, with some element of negative consequence or concurrence caught up in their wake.

To wit, the peace dividend that created The America That Worked^(TM).

Fortunately…
We could expand outward! Glorious greenfields awaited!

Unfortunately…
That land was far from everyone’s job. And friends. And stores. And churches. No one wanted to be so far away.

Fortunately…
We created majestic freeways to whisk our young men and their families around, as easy as those short walks and trolley rides of yesteryear!

Unfortunately…
Every new resident and the car they brought with them made that experience incrementally worse for everyone.

Fortunately…
With all our newfound prosperity, we could finally clean up our slummy cities with new, public housing!

Unfortunately…
Urban renewal’s destruction of struggling but functioning neighborhoods also destroyed functioning micro economies, severed social support networks, and further concentrated poverty.

Some of that exurban expansion was strictly emergent, and some of it was at the urging of Wise Experts.  Similarly, emergence played a big role in the exodus from the cities, but expertise gave us urban renewal.

There's a recent Strong Towns post identifying potentially serious difficulties with the Suburban Experiment that gives insufficient credence to emergence.

There are two differences between the Traditional Development Pattern and the Suburban Experiment that we find significant and critical. First, in the traditional approach, development happens incrementally over time. Things start small and then mature in phases. For the suburban approach, we tend to work in large steps with grand designs.

Economies of scale is a modern ethic that, combined with our perceived affluence, supersedes the more bootstrapping mindset of incrementalism.

The second difference is closely related. With the traditional approach, all development is on a continuum of improvement. It starts incremental and it is always seeking the energy to move to the next level of advancement. With our post-War Suburban Experiment, we build everything to a finished state. No additional improvement is anticipated or even desired.

That shift in mindset is really important. When your ethic is to build things to a finished state, the tendency is to demand the highest quality you can hope to experience. That means that even cities that are struggling financially are often weighed down by regulation and bureaucracy that ensures "quality construction". Lost is the notion of bootstrapping -- doing what you can with what you have available -- and with it the notion of widespread upward mobility.

The cookie-cutter aspect of suburban development, however, is itself an emerged phenomenon.  Yes, any subdivision is predictably homogeneous these days, and any major crossroad, whether in New Hampshire or New Mexico, looks a lot like any other major crossroad.  But the idea of a small number of similar houses began with Levittown, the McDonald's idea began with one California drive-in that bought a lot of milk-shake makers, and Best Western Motels simply offered comparable accommodations among a number of otherwise independent motelliers, long before Holiday Inn or Red Roof Inn came up with standard designs.

Perhaps the installed bases of standardized housing or standardized food or standardized lodging bring with them impediments to further improvement.  On the other hand, aren't the downwardly mobile crossroads and suburbs saddled with earlier iterations of what looked like standard practice?

Thus there will be incremental improvement, and occasionally, those increments will prove disruptive.

AVOID THE STRAIN, TAKE THE TRAIN.

The United Kingdom generalizes the Flying Scotsman.

The UK has announced plans for a north to south high speed rail network this week, which will in effect bring the passenger door-to-door more quickly, easily and comfortably than any airline can currently manage. The proposed rail links will run between London and Glasgow and Edinburgh, with stops on the way for Birmingham and Manchester. Travel times from London to Scotland will be cut to two hours 16 minutes, with travel times between London and Manchester cut to just over an hour.

The announcement dates to the fall of 2009. Work on the project is in progress in a number of places, including along the Great Western main line between Reading and Paddington Station.  The faster trains will call at Heathrow Airport, the better to offer international passengers a fast train option.

THERE WAS A CHIEF INSPIRATION OFFICER.

The expense-preference behavior at Northern Illinois University goes on and on and on.

In a previous post, I noted first class upgrades for consultants, but was not able to document the chief inspiration officer.

There was one, and she, too, is making restitution.

Former affiliate employee Magaly Rodriguez owes $2,793.63 in travel expenses which NIU President Doug Baker said was reimbursed inappropriately by NIU, according to an NIU news release Wednesday.

Rodriguez was hired in 2013 as a change specialist functioning as a consultant until May 16, 2014. In May, Rodgriguez’ title was changed to affiliate employee which disqualified her for the consultant work-related expense coverage, said NIU Spokesperson Joe King.

Rodriguez spent $1,604.80 on airfare, $1,128.15 on airport transportation and $60.68 on meals, while traveling between Minnetonka, Minn., O’Hare International Airport and DeKalb, according to a Jan. 20 Divison of Finance and Administration letter sent to Rodriguez.

Just what knowledge did this person possess that somebody local couldn't provide?

As a change specialist, Rodriguez provided consulting services for NIU in December 2013 which included conducting workshops for deans, the senior cabinet and associate provosts and directors. As an affiliate employee, Rodriguez hosted workshops for academic departments and advised senior leaders, King said. Rodriguez works for Volentum, an enterprise management consulting company that teaches problem-solving methods, where she created methods of building communication and a sense of community, according to Volentum’s website.

“All of her work was focused on helping the university create a climate that is open to change where the university can approach change in a positive and productive way so that we can adapt and excel in a very dynamic time,” King said.

Rodriguez’ improper reimbursement was one of the reasons Baker “implemented an examination and overhaul of the longstanding financial procedures in the president’s office,” according to the news release.

Translation: those deanlets and deanlings have to justify the oxygen they use, and meeting and retreating and issuing statements in Dilbert-issue corporate speak is more impressive when someone from elsewhere is present.

Where is the faculty leadership to point out that these administrative usurpations are disrupting the community of scholarship, and not in a good way?

WRECKAGE OR RENEWAL?

Start with signs of the wreckage.  Charles Murray, who has written extensively about social polarization and cultural rot, summarizes.

The new upper class consists of the people who shape the country’s economy, politics and culture. The new lower class consists of people who have dropped out of some of the most basic institutions of American civic culture, especially work and marriage. Both of these new classes have repudiated the American creed in practice, whatever lip service they may still pay to it.

The establishment, whatever its political leanings, becomes a cohort of people who believe they have been born booted and spurred to saddle and ride the people.

The members of the new upper class are seldom attracted to the films, TV shows and music that are most popular in mainstream America. They have a distinctive culture in the food they eat, the way they take care of their health, their child-rearing practices, the vacations they take, the books they read, the websites they visit and their taste in beer. You name it, the new upper class has its own way of doing it.

Another characteristic of the new upper class—and something new under the American sun—is their easy acceptance of being members of an upper class and their condescension toward ordinary Americans. Try using “redneck” in a conversation with your highly educated friends and see if it triggers any of the nervousness that accompanies other ethnic slurs. Refer to “flyover country” and consider the implications when no one asks, “What does that mean?” Or I can send you to chat with a friend in Washington, D.C., who bought a weekend place in West Virginia. He will tell you about the contempt for his new neighbors that he has encountered in the elite precincts of the nation’s capital.

For its part, mainstream America is fully aware of this condescension and contempt and is understandably irritated by it.

Barbara Burt, observing the same events, from a different perspective, offers "ten reasons the [Democrat] establishment missed the boat."  Although she seems disappointment that Barack Hussein Obama was unable to fundamentally transform the United States into another case of Eurosclerosis, some of her points harmonize with Mr Murray's observations.

If those in the one percent live a comfortable, safe life, they don’t feel the frustration experienced by the less lucky when dealing with the daily hassles of hamstrung government. Underfunded schools? Lousy transportation alternatives? Environmental hazards? Crumbling infrastructure? Ineffective (or worse) policing? Government at all levels seems unable to provide services that communities require to thrive. And because the problems have grown so big and feel so unsurmountable, incremental change—as a process within the current system—appears impossibly slow and easily diverted. To use a favorite phrase of the elite, what’s needed is “disruption” of that failed system. Well, out in the land, there’s a definite appetite for disruption, born out of despair.

Disruption, as I understand it, is emergent and not likely to be advanced, whether by the suits expecting it or by the commissars willing it, through sheer force of will.

THE SAFE COURSE MUST BE TAKEN.

On most railroads with timetabled passenger trains using the same track in both directions, there is a clear protocol by which one train waits at the end of a side track to clear the movement of another train.

Here is the protocol being observed on the Wellington to Johnsonville section of New Zealand's railroads.  This branch looks like William Jackson Palmer hired John I. Beggs to build the tracks.

Khandallah Road Station, 6 January 2000.

Note that the signal at the far end of the platform is red.  This is a STOP AND STAY aspect, and it will clear to permit the train I'm on to descend the steep grade into Wellington station.  The signal at the opposite side of the approaching train is also STOP AND STAY.  Modern signal installations generally set all signals governing opposing movements either to STOP OR STAY, if at the end of multiple track, or to STOP, in case a train runs past the STOP AND STAY and enters the single track.  That (improper) entrance will also set signals facing the approaching train to STOP.  An investigation is embarrassing to the carrier, and some crew members will be disciplined, but that's better than broken trains and dead people.

Here we see the same protocol at work on the South Shore Line.

Sheridan siding, Michigan City, Indiana, 13 August 1966.

The approaching train is leaving the single track that runs through the middle of Michigan City streets.  There are two levels of protection at work here, the red signal and a line in the employee timetable establishing a meet here.  Recent South Shore schedules have moved many of the scheduled meets elsewhere, because of heavy passenger loadings affecting the timekeeping, particularly of rush-hour trains.

The latest news out of Germany suggests that in the Bad Aibling collision, the dispatcher and the train crews neglected to take the safe course -- with one of the trains running four minutes late?

Investigators currently believe that the controller mistakenly allowed both trains to enter the single stretch of track at the same time.

While a warning signal is supposed to be set off in such circumstances, it is possible to circumvent it.

If this is how events took place it would seem the controller only noticed his mistake at the last second - as indicated by the use of the emergency call.

There's more in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, auf Deutsch.

History rhymes.  In the fatal Speedrail collision in 1950, the southbound train accepted a permissive signal, and the motorman of the northbound train, also president of the railroad, ordered an employee to line his train for the main line, against a signal that turned out afterwards to be a stop signal.  At Bad Aibling, it appears that the dispatcher allowed a train to pass a stop signal, only to attempt to reverse his error later.  In both collisions, curves reduced the line of sight for the operators.

TO PRESIDENT NEWMAN: NUTS!

Inside Higher Ed reports that Mount St. Mary College in Maryland has reinstated faculty members who dared call out their president, a corporate raider who compared struggling students to expendable bunnies.  Faculty members, commendably, are rediscovering who the stewards of the college are.

University reverses course on action that outraged many in academe, but also says board still backs controversial president. Professors aren't ready to return. UPDATE: Faculty sends letter to president, asking him to resign by Monday.

The details:

Whether the tensions will be resolved remains unclear. Inside Higher Ed reached Thane Naberhaus, one of the faculty members who was fired this week, despite having tenure, and asked him if he was planning to return. His email response: "Hell no."

A man that eloquent deserves to be reinforced.

He elaborated: "I'll refuse to be reinstated until Newman is gone and some others are gone."

Ed Egan is the adviser to the student newspaper, and is the other faculty member who was fired and who the university said has now been reinstated. In an interview, he said Newman called him and told him he would be reinstated in part because the Roman Catholic Church has declared a Year of Mercy.

Egan said he was uncertain about returning and that he was bothered by the statement -- and went to the faculty meeting to tell his colleagues why. Egan said he told them that the president's statement was "as if I had done something wrong and was in need of his mercy." In fact, the reinstatement is an attempt to "placate" the campus so that it will not consider all the issues that go beyond the two professors.

"Reinstating me does not make these other problems go away, and Simon Newman needs to show mercy on Mount St. Mary's and resign," Egan said. He added that he is consulting lawyers on his next moves.

A faculty vote of no confidence in Mr Newman might be more significant than a similar vote taken at Harvard, where president Lawrence Summers made an accurate if inartful statement about faculty capabilities, one that did not square with the preconceptions of the identity politics militants.  Here, a president with no understanding of academic culture has broken a fundamental premise about how a university operates, one that goes beyond free speech and due process.  Where are the faculty members at perhaps better known universities, perhaps with broader recognition as scholars, also reclaiming curricular policy from serial administrators and the swarms of deanlets and deanlings who harass the faculty and eat up all the pay raises?

THE ROT BEGINS EARLIER.

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post, no member of the vast right wing conspiracy, offers evidence of illiberal lefty militancy.  "Today’s students are indeed both more left wing and more openly hostile to free speech than earlier generations of collegians."  How bad is it?  Liberating tolerance (more accurately, illiberal intolerance) is as routine as skipping morning classes.

According to the findings, the current crop of freshmen can lay claim to multiple superlatives. Among them: most willing to shut down speech they find offensive.

About 71 percent of freshmen surveyed in the fall said they agreed with the statement that “colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus.” This question has been asked on and off for a couple of decades, and 2015 logged the highest percentage of positive responses on record. For comparison, the share in the early 1990s hovered around 60 percent; also high, but not as high as today.

Yes, dear reader, this is a survey of matriculants at 200 institutions of higher learning leftist indoctrination.  The matriculants appear to be self-selected to be reinforced in their prejudices.

The highest share of students since 1973 now consider themselves left of center. And the highest share of college freshmen ever (or at least since this question was first asked in 1970) call themselves “far left.”

Their brain-brothers, apparently, would rather intimidate Ms Rampell than debate her.

I’m hardly an arch-conservative, and whenever I write things that college students disagree with, I get a lot of email demanding retraction, recantation, apology, prostration. Some younger readers — not all that much younger than I, mind you — have accused my writing of “taking away” both their voices and their agency, as if free speech were zero-sum.

These students, however, have lost the good of the intellect before they receive the fat envelope from the conditioning station of choice.

Remember that these survey questions were asked of newly matriculated college freshmen. That is, students are setting foot on campus already more liberal, more protest-happy and more amenable to speech restrictions than their predecessors.

Which suggests that colleges themselves are not wholly responsible for rising liberal and illiberal tendencies on campus — even if they do sometimes aid and abet both trends.

Perhaps it's a different grade of Distressed Material from the matriculant who can't read or figure at the sixth grade level, but Distressed Material it still is.

THE VALUE OF OTHERING.

That's not who we are.  "It’s a way to call a policy, idea, or person un-American without using that harsh term.  It subtly conveys what would otherwise be an incendiary claim." Take away the polemics, dear reader, and you have a useful explanation of the value of a standard, whether we are speaking of what it means to buy into America, or what academic integrity is, or what Christian values are, or what operating a railroad safely involves.

KICKED WHERE IT HURTS.

Opinion-mongers of all stripes appear to be in agreement that this year's election is all about populist rage, although the world-view of the platform the monger occupies predicts the way in which the rage takes form.  Then there's John Kass.

What I'm enjoying now is a bit subtle, taking place in the shadows, where the establishment lords are quivering just a bit. And I plan on savoring it for a while, because finally both sides, Democrats and Republicans, are getting what they deserve.

The national Combine sends out its meat puppets on TV to preach the talking points about who is electable and who is not and who is an embarrassment and who is not. But about half the voters in each party loathe the establishment candidates. They've had enough.

The middle-aged are tired of being afraid for their jobs, or working part-time jobs, and they're angry. And the young, raised to expect the world, don't see much of a future.

Sanders promises a revolution. Trump and Cruz promise battle. They're the ones with the energy. They're the ones telling voters they'll put the boots to the status quo. And the others? They're just holding on.

This is not the year, however, to conduct another advance auction of stolen goods.

The establishment doesn't think that way. Their parties are a gathering of interests, formed to use government to protect what they have, to take from others, to increase their slice. The candidates are chosen like fine horseflesh, the idea being to find the one you can ride to the gold.

Voters know this now. There should be no doubt except among the thickest partisan meat puppets.

They know Hillary is of the establishment, and they know Jeb! and the others are of the establishment, and they're tired. They've watched the banks that are too big to fail get federal bailouts after the economic catastrophe, and none of the big fish went to prison. They've seen their jobs shipped overseas, and they're told that their anger isn't only irrational but bothersome.

Just under nine months to go.

IT'S OBAMA'S WORLD.

The last two Democrat hopefuls, and the rest of us, are living in it.

The loathsome and reprehensible caricature of America foisted upon its citizenry by Sanders and Clinton — a country with undeniably serious problems and challenges that is still the last great hope of Earth and a place Americans should and mostly do still feel grateful to have as their unique birthright — is another sign that we have a great many lessons we’re going to have to learn all over again.

In the 1980s, Democrats found themselves forced to battle the impression that they were anti-American.

In the 1980s, Donks had to distinguish themselves from Jimmy Carter and confront Morning in America, which did include an economic recovery and hints of disarray in the Evil Empire.

The correlation of forces is less favorable today.

IF YOU WANT TO BE GOOD TO THE ENVIRONMENT, CLUSTER IN CITIES.

Or why the Lorax went wrong, even without failing to replant the Truffula trees.  The authors show their work.

A TRAIN IS SUPERIOR TO ANOTHER TRAIN BY RIGHT, CLASS, OR DIRECTION.

Why was one of the interurbans involved in the Bad Aibling collision not in a designated siding?

It’s believed the trains collided at or close to the track speed of about 62 mph. Neither engineer may have seen the other on the curved track until just before the moment of impact; both were killed, along with at least eight other people, and dozens were injured. “Black boxes” have been recovered and are being analyzed.

The eastbound train was to have been held at Bad Aibling, where there’s a passing track, until the westbound train arrived. Instead, the two trains hit about a mile east of town. Why did the eastbound engineer not know to wait for opposing traffic?

Moreover, both trains were fitted with PZB90 cab signaling, designed to sound an alarm and bring trains to a stop if there’s a danger of collision. How could the eastbound train proceed past a red signal without triggering automatic braking?

There will be a lot of speculation about mechanical failure.  Sixty years after Fail-Safe, can a capacitor failure still lead to a train wreck?

More troubling, though, is that "was to have been held" locution.  Recall, from our primer on positive train control, what the role of a timetable (which designates superiority by class and direction) is.

Note, in railroading, that a timetable does not REQUIRE a train to be at a station at the specified time.  Rather, it means that the train will not be BEYOND that station BEFORE that time.

Thus, if the Bad Aibling meet is stipulated in the timetable, and westbound trains are superior to eastward trains, the eastbound must wait.  No further signalling is required.  If the westbound is seriously delayed, the train dispatcher (I don't know the German equivalent job title) can change the meeting siding in a number of ways.  And if the dispatcher set up a meet on the fly, which is possible with centralized traffic control, the machinery will not permit conflicting routes to be set.  Thus one train must see a stop signal.

Curiouser and curiouser.

AN EPITAPH FOR OUR TIMES.

Pronounced by Derek Hunter.

The [Democrat] party underestimated just how radical its base had become. After decades of fostering discontent with American society as a weapon against Republicans, the monster the party created has turned against it.

The argument extends directly to the emergence of unteachable crybullies in higher education.

A UNIVERSITY IS NOT A JUMPED UP TRADE SCHOOL OR A CONDITIONING STATION FOR DOCILE CITIZENS.

That's "Underground Grammarian" Richard Mitchell, who I have previously cited at greater length.
Former Mount St. Mary philosopher John Schwenkler makes the same point, suggesting that neither is a university a place for drowning bunnies.

The Mount, though, is supposed to be different. It’s supposed to be a community, a place where administrators aren’t bosses, students aren’t customers, and faculty aren’t employees. Simon Newman, with his MBA and previous stint at Bain Capital, seems not to care about this.

Neither do a lot of deanlets and deanlings, hedge fund experience or not. Nor, sometimes, do trendy and transgressive faculty.  But the good of the intellect is something that ought to be cultivated.

In the time I taught at Mount St. Mary’s I encountered many students who would likely have been better off waiting a few years before going to college, or maybe not going at all. I also encountered many more who struggled at various times, and as freshmen especially, before turning around to become wonderful students and exemplary adults. Many such students have spoken out in the wake of Newman’s callous comments, recalling what it was like to be a struggling college student, and the way that faculty and administrators at the Mount reached out to help them work through this. Large secular universities, like the one where I teach now, usually aren’t able to do this sort of thing, at least not in such a focused way. Having access to this level of support and understanding is one of the things that makes going to a small Catholic college arguably worth the bill.

Yes, perhaps the common schools ought to be doing a better job, and the high schools that turn out a lot of Distressed Material ought be identified and shamed and sent the bill.  And the common culture ought be less trashy.  And still, running Mount St. Mary, or Marquette, or Northern Illinois more like a business surely produces the miserable people, the people who have lost the good of the intellect.

SEPARATING EQUILIBRIUM.

Some years ago, Richard Vedder referred to the flagship state universities as gated university communities.  But in a world where the fifty claimants to belong in the top twenty national universities limit enrollment and quote low tuitions so as to appear selective, how else might faculty and admissions directors at the flagships respond to excess demand for intellectually challenging education?

The original motivation behind most state universities was a desire to provide low cost education for the masses. Yet the flagship universities are very often almost contemptuous of this mission. While Marie Antoinette may have said to the French peasants who could not afford bread, "let them eat cake," today's state university president confronted with the fact that few poor go to his or her school say "let them go to a community college."

That, dear reader, is the heart of the tussle over whether publicly funded universities constitute a regressive transfer, either by catering to students born to the upper middle class, or students who would join the upper middle class after graduation.  But where there is excess demand for what looks like prestige degrees, perhaps the land-grants, and the mid-majors, and the Compass Point States ought to lift their game.  That appears to be what Wisconsin at Milwaukee did.

Lesser known research institutions with this distinction include Texas Tech, University of Mississippi and West Virginia, which like UWM, moved from R-2 "high research activity" to R-1 "highest research activity" in the Carnegie classifications.

"Through grit and determination — and despite dwindling state resources — you made UWM the prominent research and access institution that it is today," Chancellor Mark Mone said in an email he sent campuswide Monday. "This is a proud moment in our history and I congratulate you."

What the bump actually means will be determined largely by what the university makes of it, according to the man who directs the program at Indiana University Bloomington that produces the Carnegie classifications.

Literally, moving up from R-2 to R-1 means: "You've crossed over from one side of the line to the other," said Victor M.H. Borden, the program director and an educational leadership and policy studies professor at Indiana University.

It's accurate for a university that moves into the R-1 classification to say it's producing a level of research like other institutions in the group, based on the numbers, Borden said Monday.

The R-1 classification is not a ranking, and yet it matters. In research, there's a them-that-has-gets effect, as some government grants are earmarked only for R-1 universities. And I claim it as a win for striving students.

Milwaukee, despite having neither high-visibility football nor royalties from rat poison, now has more Wisconsin residents enrolled than Madison, and Milwaukee's part of the social contract is to make sure that its brainiacs and strivers get the intellectual challenge they might have hoped to get at Madison, had Madison provided a slot for them.  The incentive to the former teachers' colleges ought to be to lift their academic profiles as well.

And Milwaukee's faculty and administration have had their eyes on this prize for at least ten years.

But perhaps it doesn't matter.  The same article that reports on Milwaukee and Mississippi and West Virginia (Northern Illinois earned this status some years ago) earning the R-1 reports that Dartmouth has been relegated to R-2.  Perhaps that doesn't matter, as Dartmouth is Ivy, and it continues to set the pace for political correctness.  Gosh, next they'll come for my small cache of buffalo nickels.

FRACK THEM.

Cheaper crude oil defunds Iran, the Sillies, the Saudis, and Russia.

Regardless of the belt-tightening, bankruptcies and consolidations rolling through the U.S. shale ecosystem, the physical resources, infrastructure, experience and intellectual property don’t evaporate, though they may end up with new owners.

Some analysts believe that once prices move north of $40 a barrel the shale resurgence will start; others think it will take at least $50 to make it happen. No one disputes that $70 would feel like Mardi Gras time again from North Dakota and Colorado, to Oklahoma and Texas. The futures market, which reflects today’s trader and investor sentiments, doesn’t foresee $50 for several years yet. That’s a very big problem for Russia and OPEC because even $50 to $70 is a long way below $100.

The minute that private sector investors and oil companies are convinced that oil prices are on the way towards just $50 or so, they will unleash hundreds of billions of dollars in investment capital now standing idle.

Cheap oil will be good for United States commercial and security interests (although petro-states going broke might lash out at the U.S. or at their neighbors) although inducements to develop green technologies -- and the learning curve works in their favor at ever lower oil prices -- will be less strong.