IF YOU DIDN'T WANT TO GO TO MINNEAPOLIS, WHY DID YOU GET ON THE TRAIN?

Inside Higher Ed gives space to an anonymous "Junior Prof" who suggests "Academe should value research and publication outside of peer-review metrics."  No.  Seriously.

Many researchers, me included, find the idea that you should only publish in certain venues limiting, frustrating and fraught with problems. The claims listed above are oversimplifications that erase the nuance of peer-review publication truths. Individuals in our profession would like to claim that if someone has good ideas and research that supports them, they will get their ideas published, but many of us know it isn’t that simple.

The peer-review process leaves the fate of someone’s research findings subject to the whims of two or three people who, like all of us, are influenced by variables including their own natural preferences for certain kinds of work.

He's not totally wrong, academic research, like any other human endeavor, is subject to fads and preference cascades, and there is nothing quite so draining as interviewing for an area specialist to hear the same set of au courant phrases, e.g. "Lucas critique" or "unit root" from eight straight job candidates (that's the four hours before lunch ...): and I bet there's an awful lot of brain-power squandered going through the solicitations for grants and the lists of grants awarded in the previous quarter, in order that a scholar's research might be sold more along the lines of what gets funded, rather than along the lines of what that scholar might actually be able to add to the conversation, for that's what the world of scholarly publication is, a conversation.

In any discipline, there is no lack of interesting and profound questions, but the publish-or-perish mentality does skew research efforts, why else is the expression "minimal publishable unit" a term of art? In any discipline, there are also journals people read, and journals that exist solely to provide solace. But even before improved database management made possible the daily updating of journal, article, and researcher impact factors, departmental promotion committees understood what a strong contribution was, and what vita padding was, and at the college or university level, everybody understood the way a case might be spun, and establishing the requisite regional or national or international reputation couldn't rest on a list of publications in the journals that provide solace.

But if you want to be a public intellectual first, maybe find yourself an opportunity to write opinion columns for the local newspaper and pray for syndication, or get yourself a web journal and build up a following.

Perhaps the most important argument in favor of varying publication venues: peer-reviewed publications are simply not the only place where intellectual conversations are happening and where a researcher might want to share their ideas. In fact, non-peer-reviewed publications, especially the ones that don’t have paywalls, have the potential to reach far more people and result in a much more stimulating dialogue. Researchers concerned with social justice will also rightfully point out the elitism that peer-reviewed publication tends to reinforce. These publication venues reify notions of membership within intellectual communities and keep cutting-edge research in the hands of relatively few people.

My personal commitment to increased acceptance of non-peer-reviewed publication venues stems from a desire to engage the university -- often regarded both as a presence in a community and separate from it -- in a larger, more inclusive conversation. I also find writing for different groups of people, including my students, personally fulfilling. The peer-review pipeline can be disheartening, and writing for other audiences is a source of meaning making when your research might otherwise feel too niche or siloed to create a larger impact.

My students are more likely to engage with newspaper articles, YouTube videos or op-ed pieces that are related to course material than a peer-reviewed alternative. I publish in non-peer-reviewed venues and will continue to do so for the duration of my career for a whole host of reasons, and I imagine that many of you elect to do so for an even broader set of rationales.

Fine.  The point of having venues for specialist conversation is to provide a forum for testing the best arguments against the best counter-arguments.  That's no different from, say, a grandmaster chess tournament or the April golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.  (Or, for that matter, my just-for-fun bridge columns.  I'm neither Oswald Jacoby nor have any aspirations to be one.)

What intrigues is that the aspiring public intellectual intends to use his informal writings to contribute to the specialist conversation.

I asked my chair if I could prepare a narrative describing why such non-peer-reviewed publication venues were important to me as a researcher and also made sense for my research objectives. I described the caliber, audience and potential impact of research that was made available in another format and persuaded him that this kind of work demonstrated similar levels of achievement as many peer-reviewed venues. I asked my chair to help me find a way to get this work in my tenure dossier and to be my ally in opening up a conversation with our dean about crediting alternatives to peer-reviewed publications. We put the agreement in writing, and I asked my chair and dean each to sign it.

Is our understanding bulletproof? Of course not. Will it help me to feel comfortable engaging multiple audiences and publication methods on the path toward tenure? Absolutely.

Ultimately, though, it will be the area specialists who review the tenure dossier who will help this professor's colleagues determine whether he has advanced the specialist conversation in a meaningful way.

GO WHERE NOBODY ELSE HAS, AND LEAVE A TRAIL.

Washington Post columnist Arthur C. Brooks suggests that Beethoven's loss of hearing liberated him from the shackles of composing convention.

Deafness freed Beethoven as a composer because he no longer had society’s soundtrack in his ears. Perhaps therein lies a lesson for each of us. I know, I know: You’re no Beethoven. But as you read the lines above, maybe you could relate to the great composer’s loss in some small way. Have you lost something that defined your identity? Maybe it involves your looks. Or your social prestige. Or your professional relevance.

How might this loss set you free? You might finally define yourself in new ways, free from the boundaries you set for yourself based on the expectations of others.

Better late than never, dear reader, although, subject to a proper respect for the conventions of mannerly interaction, there's no reason not to be contrarian, simply persuade by changing minds, even if it's at odds with convention.

THE FORCE REBALANCES.

The Green Bay Packers return to the playoffs.

There's a new coach, who is the first Packer head coach to guide a team to the playoffs in his first season.

The standard is still five championships in six championship games in eight seasons.

First qualify, then keep working for seedings.

A QUARTER-MILLENNIUM OF BEETHOVEN.

The Avalon String Quartet closed out the fall semester with a recital of three Beethoven quartets: the Opus 18, No. 1, the Opus 95, and the Opus 130 with the revised ending.

The quartet will be presenting the entire cycle of Beethoven quartets over the next two years.  That marks the third time in my time in DeKalb that a quartet in residence, either the Avalon or their predecessors, the Vermeer Quartet, have offered the cycle.

Chicago residents will have an opportunity to enjoy the cycle, as Roosevelt University, in the South Michigan college town part of Chicago, will also be hosting the quartet, on Sunday afternoons.  The first such recital will be January 12.  The Bears will not be playing.

III.ADVENT.

This week's meditation: one of the Ten Commandments prohibits stealing.

Arguably, coveting precedes stealing, but doesn't always lead to stealing.

Why, then, a separate, specific prohibition on coveting?

TODAY'S STAKHANOVITES ARE THE ONE-PERCENTERS.

Four months ago, I professed to be less than impressed with Yale's Daniel Markovits, who apparently clawed his way to the top of the status hierarchy only to complain about the struggles to get there.  I've subsequently acquired and read his The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite.  I don't have much reason to change my impressions (based, as they were, on a shorter article) but will use Book Review N^o. 12 partially as social science and partially as reminiscence.

Mr Markovits divides his argument into three parts: Meritocracy and its Discontents, where he focuses on the striving and the positional jockeying, rather than the failures of the Best and the Brightest; How Meritocracy Works, where, again, he does more to lament the culture of overwork than to consider the possibility that the worst people are thus incentivized to get on top, and a concluding The New Aristocracy, suggesting that the ways of getting on top rely more on heredity than on effort.

A WORKING CLUB CAR WOULD BE USEFUL AS A REGULAR FEATURE.

Apparently, there is a regular crowd of commuters returning to Milwaukee on the 5.08 Hiawatha departure from Chicago.  The carrier and the crew are not opposed to an occasional party.

Earlier this week, a group of Milwaukee commuters rang in the December holidays while riding home on the train with their annual party. The soiree took place on "the 5:08" in the cafe car where 35-50 riders were eating, drinking and laughing before the train even left Chicago's Union Station.

The story mentions a "cafe" car and the photos clearly show one of the Amdinette cars.  But the train does not offer food or beverage service.  It's bring your own.

Unattributed photograph retrieved from On Milwaukee.

Ordinarily, customers working behind the bar on an Amfleet car would be cause for all sorts of investigations.  Don't let the killjoys in Washington know what's going on.

During the party, Sandy Ross, a commuter who lives in Downtown Milwaukee, collected signatures and donations for the conductors' holiday cards. Every year, the group gives a cash-filled envelope to the 13 conductors – as well as to their favorite gate agent, Chris, in Chicago.

Because the bar car is simply along for extra seating space on a perpetually oversold train (even with reservations) and the rake turns back to return to Chicago within an hour of arrival, policing up is in order.

Toward the end of the line – maybe just north of Racine – riders switched modes from partiers to helpers and started cleaning up the red plastic cups, taco dip containers, thick-crust pizza boxes and homemade cookie and bread containers. Within minutes, the space was pristine again.

The riders are regulars, and they'd like more frequencies, not longer trains. Sorry, Glenview, you're being foolish.

A few mentioned they wanted more routes to-and-from Milwaukee, especially after work.

"If you miss the 5 (p.m.), you're stuck here until the 8," says [West Allis resident Todd] Allen.

Most of the Milwaukee-Chicago commuters have 14-hour work days, so do they consider moving to Chicago? The answer for most is no.

"It's way too expensive to live in Chicago," says Shea Royal. "And Milwaukee has been good to me. I went to college there and I was able to buy a home right after I graduated. Milwaukee has everything Chicago has. It's just smaller and easier to get around."

There might be some system to these parties, and strengthening that formation with a table car and letting self-organization emerge is not a bad thing.

All the same, the 4.20 Milwaukee Express (train 23 on the old Milwaukee Road) had a working lunch-lounge car right to Amtrak day, and Amtrak kept the lunch-lounge car on, and a working cafeteria car on the replacement French turbotrains.  The 5.08 departure is better timed for commuters such as the people in the story.  But why not put the lunch-lounge car back on?

THE INTEGRITY OF THE DIALECTIC MUST BE PRESERVED.

We begin with a general lament by Max Boot.

Kids, don’t become like Donald Trump. Study history. The fact that so many Americans know so little about the past means that we as a society are vulnerable to demagogues. “Don’t know much about history” is a catchy song lyric but a dangerous motto for a democracy.

Historians may not want to admit it, but they bear some blame for the increasing irrelevance of their discipline. As historians Hal Brands and Francis Gavin argue in War on the Rocks, since the 1960s, history professors have retreated from public debate into their own esoteric pursuits. The push to emphasize “cultural, social and gender history,” and to pay “greater attention to the experiences of underrepresented and oppressed groups,” they write, has been a welcome corrective to an older historiography that focused almost entirely on powerful white men. But like many revolutions, this one has gone too far, leading to the neglect of political, diplomatic and military history — subjects that students need to study and, as enrollment figures indicate, students want to study but that universities perversely neglect. Historian Jill Lepore notes that we have ditched an outdated national narrative without creating a new one to take its place, leaving a vacuum to be filled by tribalists.

Put another way, democracy dies in a darkness brought about by, inter alia, writers at influential newspapers. Consider, for instance, the 1619 Project from New York's Times, which somehow wrote about slavery and secession and emancipation without asking any history professors.

YOUR MISAPPROPRIATED TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.

Doesn't Stephen Limbaugh know that "great works" are probably socially constructed, hegemonic, and chauvinistic?

The [National Endowment for the Arts’s] process for cultivating art is informed by standards set by universities and critical theorists. Those standards of what qualify as “acceptable” contemporary art seem to be any phenomena that offends an individual’s inherent aesthetic disposition. Preferential treatment is given to those works that 1) are able to evoke the most unpleasant reaction and 2) are created with the least amount of discernible purpose.

I wonder, though, if the money is less inefficiently wasted than the public money on stadium subsidies.

Another aspect of this decline is that the [endowment] has been largely unsuccessful in fostering new interest in existing masterpieces. One example of this is evidenced by a 1977 survey showing that in the top ten metropolitan areas, more people attended the opera than football games. Think about that for a second. Of course these days you could combine opera attendance with symphony and publicly financed modern-art museum attendance all together and it would barely register against football. That decline is the result of misguided policies by a select few cultural elites at universities, in the press, and of course at the NEA.

There might be some truth to that. I am no fan of tenure music, but then, perhaps, the people in the visual and performing arts world are correct to think about more casual settings for their product.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

Komsomolskaya Pravda says so. "Ilhan Omar Joins Sanders in Drawing 1,300 People to Largest New Hampshire Rally of 2020 Primary So Far."  No, not the Babylon Bee or The Onion.

"The political revolution is strong in New Hampshire," said Sanders campaign New Hampshire state director Shannon Jackson. "We are seeing incredible enthusiasm from voters across the state. Sanders and Omar represent a vision for the future of economic, racial, environmental, and social justice, and the voters of New Hampshire are on board. The multiethnic working class coalition we are building was on display today and will ultimately lead us to victory on February 11th."

The event was so relevant that Our President couldn't even be moved to tweet about how that turnout is smaller than the line of people who couldn't get in to one of his rallies.

HAVE A CAFFEINATED CHRISTMAS.

It's not hard, when your Starbucks has a few Huskies around, to deck the hall in a Christmas mode.

A few hibernating bears would not be out of place, either, as final exams are done, the commencement exercises scheduled, and the next couple of weeks will likely be less busy.

WAIT TIL THE TYKES FIGURE OUT HOW TO SWITCH UP THE MINE.

Pajamas Media's Ed Driscoll marvels at the latest way to combine information technology and railroading.

Intelino is a new endeavor, by Innokind, a California start-up, to bring kids’ love of trains into the 21st century and add some extra magic. It’s also a sly way to teach them the basics of computer programming. But more about that later.

The basic set ships in an attractive 10.7 x 5.6 x 4.5-inch box. Inside are: twenty pieces of track, including straights, curves, and switches; colorful “action tabs” that program what the trains will do; a locomotive and a passenger car; plus stickers to apply colorful stripes to the rolling stock; and a USB charging cable for the locomotive’s built-in Lithium Polymer battery. The overall feel is bright and colorful. More a futuristic light-rail commuter train than a nostalgic early 20^th century Thomas the Tank approach to make railroading accessible to modern young tikes.

The existence of new-style train toys makes me less pessimistic about the future of the model railroading hobby. Between 3-D printing and computer programming in this manner and dead rail, I suspect we'll be OK.

As far as the computer magic on the rails, it's more mid-20th century than you'd suspect.

For older kids (and adults), there is also a free downloadable app for the iPad, iPhone, and Android, that can also control the locomotive via Bluetooth, overriding the action tabs and allowing users to play the locomotive’s whistle and bell, along with a speedometer and other features.

But the app isn’t necessary to get started as the action tabs, read by an optical sensor at the bottom of the locomotive, program the train to speed up, slow down, stop, reverse, and decouple, depending on the combination and order of the tiles. It’s almost like magic.

For example, if you put a white tile and two green tiles on the track, the train will speed up. If you put a white tile and three green tiles, the train goes even faster (and what kid isn’t going to do that?) But if you reverse the train’s direction so the optical reader sees green-green-white… nothing happens. And like magic, a three-year-old not only learns the commands faster, but also that you have to put your commands on the track in the right order.

Yes, exactly like the attempts at remotely controlling the speed and the routing of rapid transit trains in the years after the War, but you no longer have to put a large magnetized key near the motorman's cab to set the routing.

As the Intelino rolling stock will couple with the traditional Brio cars, it is just a matter of time until some kid, or perhaps some kid's parent, will figure out that the programming can include stopping, changing directions, and switching.  (The website makes reference to "steering.") Not only that, somebody researching improvements on those applications will discover that the same sort of Bluetooth technology, I think it's called Blue Rail, can be used to control more traditional model railroad locomotives moving what look more like freight or passenger cars.

THE METHODS OF MEANS TESTING AND WEALTH TAXATION ARE PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS.

That is, a Medicare recipient still pays premiums even after he's no longer working and paying payroll tax.  For many people, that's invisible, as their Part B and Part D premiums come out of their "Social" "Security" benefits.  Show any kind of prudence, though, and you, too, will find out about the Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount.

Let me quote from the notification the welfare state sends.

Each year to decide if you must pay IRMAAs, we use your Federal income tax information for the most recent tax year that is available.  However, we do not use any information that is more than three years old. We ask the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for your tax filing status, your adjusted gross income, and your tax-exempt interest income.  We then add your adjusted gross income together with your tax-exempt interest income to get an amount that we call modified adjusted gross income (MAGI).  We compare your MAGI with the income thresholds set by Medicare law.

MAGI may include one-time only income, such as capital gains, the sale of property, withdrawals from an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) or conversion from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA.  One-time income will affect your Medicare premium for only one year.

Of course it will, because there might be additional capital gains distributions or municipal bond interest for them to get their hands on next year.

That might make for a fun question at some presidential forum.  (With the Iowa caucus almost upon us, I might start paying closer attention.)  "Senator Sanders, what changes to the formula for calculating Modified Adjusted Gross Income and the Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount do you include in your Universal Medicare plans?"

PASS THE POPCORN.

Stanley Fish got de-platformed, and Paul Mirengoff of Power Line finds the whole thing schadenfreudelicious.

Fish wasn’t pleased about being disinvited. However, he’s staying true to his dismissive view of the First Amendment, insisting that there is no free speech issue here. Fish says “I have no right to speak at Seton Hall, and I have not been silenced because I was disinvited.”

That’s true. But members of the Seton Hall community have been deprived of the opportunity to hear Fish’s views. And if professors were to be required to put race front and center in literature courses, many would be unable to express themselves freely.

Fish casts his grievances in non-free speech terms. He uses the words “anti-educational” and “anti-intellectual.” His critics on the left, if they want to borrow from Fish’s playbook, might respond that these phrases are the first refuge of scoundrels.

Yes, and as Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds quips, when the legislators and high-rolling donors stop funding higher ed's shenanigans, the poobahs in administration will likely call THAT anti-intellectual.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SET THEORY?

I used to include in my graduate price theory problem sets questions in the form of "Explain why each of the suggested answers to this (multiple choice) question, from a widely-used text bank, is correct."

A few days ago, I started leafing through a game theory text, in which I found the following question:

Consider the set P of all persons currently living in your city.  Determine which rules from the following define functions.

(a) For each person x, let f(x) be the father of person x.
(b) For each person x, let g(x) be the son of person x.
(c) For each person x, let h(x) be the height of person x.
(d) For each person x, let w(x) be the weight of person x.

Here goes: in (a), are we discussing a mapping from P to P?  Abstracting, for the moment, from sperm donors, cloning, or surrogacy or adoption, we're still dealing with the possibility that the father of person x doesn't live in your city.  In (b), clearly we can't assign a unique image of x in the range, as there will be persons x with more than one son, and, again, those sons might live in different cities.  But the chapter, and as far as I can tell, the book, has not introduced the generalization of a function that we call a correspondence (the image of a vector in the domain is a set in the range.)

Then, we get into the game-theoretic version of rivet counting for (c) and (d): although at any moment of time (at this point in time, for you Watergate buffs) there is a unique real number representing a person's height or weight, we're still in a world where h(x,t) differs from h(x, t').

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH.

Neo-Neocon: "The Democrats want to define Trump being president as a high crime and misdemeanor."

Trump is president, and many people find that unconscionable. Some of those people sit in positions of power and are not at all averse to using that power in any way they can to make sure he does not continue to be president.

The House will vote on articles of impeachment next week, and it's unlikely that any minds will be changed.

THEY WILL GET OLD BEFORE THEY GET RICH.

Thomas Friedman has expressed envy for China's totalitarian state being able to circumvent process and Do Big Things quickly.  He also noted, some years previously, that they were likely to get old (meaning pension burdens and inexperienced workers) before they got rich.

May you live in interesting times.

What legitimacy the Communist Party possessed was based on the decades of economic growth inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. But growth has slowed to its lowest level in decades as the Chinese workforce ages, low-hanging investment opportunities disappear, and the trade war with the United States reduces manufacturing output and sends supply lines to Vietnam and Mexico. Capital is fleeing China at a record pace as the bourgeoisie hedge against stagnation and turmoil.

For all of the Chinese government's much publicized investments in research and development and defense, and despite the size of its economy, per capita gross domestic product is $10,000, slightly less than that of the Russia Federation ($11,000) and a fraction of that of the United States ($65,000). Recent weeks have brought an uptick in bank runs.

Meanwhile, the repression of socially dangerous elements (still relatively easy to contain as in Hong Kong and Macao, or to marginalize as ethnic minorities) tightens.

These are not the moves of a regime confident in its ability to win the allegiance of a multi-ethnic population of 1.4 billion people. They are the policies of an insular and jittery faction whose uncertainty toward a changing economic and demographic landscape has made it suspicious of and opposed to even the slightest hints of liberal democracy. The ambitions of Chairman Xi for a Eurasia integrated under the Belt and Road Initiative, where the preponderance of the latest equipment in key sectors is manufactured, are both grand and mismatched for a nation whose leaders are concerned most with the operation of the surveillance state that keeps them in power.

Meanwhile, the Great Power dynamics of the southwestern Pacific region look familiar.

The resistance to Beijing is both domestic and foreign. Lost in all the predictions of Chinese dominance were the voices of China's neighbors in the Pacific. Neither Japan, nor Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, nor Australia want to live in a Chinese lake. Most extraordinary has been the response of the United States. Within four years, the American elite has swapped its belief in China's "peaceful rise" for the recognition that it may be in the opening phase of a Second Cold War whose outcome will determine the ideological character of the 21st century. While Tariff Man wages his trade war, opposing Chinese theft of intellectual property and arguing for structural changes to China's state owned enterprises, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper speak of the political and security challenges presented by Chinese authoritarians who become more willing to lash out as they lose their grip.

It can't be reassuring to the elites, or to people who remember the 1930s, that the people who might have ridden up during the economic expansion have a lot to lose.

In the space of two generations China's professional classes went from nothing to a great deal of something. Publicly they attribute their success to talent and hard work. Privately they admit that they must share this credit with good luck.[4] But will the good luck hold? In a China dramatically dividing, a world cleft ever more clearly between haves and have-nots, will they be able to stay on the side of the haves? The problem is made all the more nerve-racking when they realize that this is not just their problem: it is their kid's problem too.

It is hard to ride the tiger; harder still to ride it while teaching your child how to hold the reins. This paranoia about the capabilities and prospects of the next generation casts an omnipresent gloom. It grips the hearts of parents from the lowest tier of the Chinese middle class all the way up to the families of billionaires. I know this through personal experience. I was disturbed by the first Chinese multi-millionaire who expressed this fear to me. "Why should he worry?" I wondered. Why should someone with all of this wealth be so stressed and worried about his children's intellectual training? Why does he worry about them not having an education good enough for "the challenges of the future?" Surely, given the wealth they will inherit, they will be ok?

Surely so.... unless you are not so sure your children will be in a position to inherit anything.

I wonder how you say "rigged system" and "drain the swamp" in Mandarin.

The Party is a racket. The guys at the top are not any different from the ones you deal with at the bottom. The Party exists to make sure their kids have a spot at the front of the line no matter how much more your kids deserve it. You are not forced to call Xi all these fancy titles because it will help him restore China to its ancestral glory: you are forced to do all of that so Xi Jinping's daughter gets into Harvard and his family racks up homes in Hong Kong. All of the taxes, the censorship, the ridiculous rules and regulations, the blustering about war, the hero-worship and the propaganda, the detention centers and the cameras—it is all a racket. You live a slave so that someone else's children can get ahead.

Or whether those homes of the nachalstvo in Hong Kong become latter-day versions of a Tulieries palace to storm.  "Sooner or later it will explode."

The footnote [4]: "I have never heard, in private or public, a Chinese person attribute their personal wealth to the Communist Party of China. Support for the Party stems from other sources."

TROLL LEVEL: TRUMP.

Our President uses his Twitter channel to circulate a satire story from The Babylon Bee.

That triggers a fact-check from Snopes.

Pajamas Media's Paula Bolyard has the response about right.

It's not just conservatives Snopes doesn't like. They hate humor and they're ideologically opposed to fun—they actually excel at sucking the fun out of literally everything. (Go ahead, make my day and fact-check that, Snopes.)

My advice to the folks at Snopes: Lighten up, laugh a little. It'll do your hearts, which are two sizes too small, good.

Addendum: Twitter had a lot of fun with this tonight. Our friends at Twitchy have recorded the hilarity for the annals of history.

No doubt, somewhere there is a wokescold frowning and muttering, "how DARE you?"

TAKE YOUR BIKE TO WORK.

A social media kerfuffle over a Peloton commercial?  Perhaps the most first-world-problem Christmas story ever.

The Christmas ad, in which a husband surprises his already-fit wife with a Peloton stationary bike began to tell its thirty-second story in between NCIS reruns. We both commented on the ridiculousness of the ad, featuring a vloggin’ young woman on her year-long journey that “changed her,” presumably from skinny to skinny-er.

The internet has had a field day with this privileged depiction of overcoming fitness “struggle” and its supposed life-changing effects. In fairness, I take a lighter perspective on this, appreciating anyone’s drive to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a desire for an all-season approach to physical activity. I will never condemn someone for doing what it takes to stay active and physically and mentally healthy.

A colleague who conducted spin classes for the university recreation center characterized Peoloton as a rather expensive way to get your exercise.  But that students keep fit by pedaling rapidly while going nowhere suggest we're a long way from the days of working out getting to work.

In a world where most people view cycling as a form of fitness, we make the more sustainable choice to attack the elements and commute through the barbs that Mother Nature throws at us.

We do this because we understand that it’s better for our planet, as every mile we drive adds nearly one pound of CO2 in the air. We do this because we know that our cities are better off when we make the choice not to drive a car. We do this because we now know the real reward lies in the greater connection we have with our surroundings when we step outside of our private boxes on wheels and experience our community without windows or walls. Finally, we do it because we don’t have $2,200 and $40 a month for something that sits in our living room and does nothing but makes you sweat for a few minutes each day.

In amazing cities all over the world, like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, cycling is the #1 mode of transportation. The citizens of these cities are far healthier than we are, as are the cities themselves. In these places, exercise is part of how people commute and navigate their surroundings… healthy living isn’t a static piece of equipment in their living rooms, it’s the result of every ride to work, every trip to the store and every family outing to the park. Healthy living is embedded into their life.

For those of us who live in the U.S., where cyclists only make up about 1% of daily commuters, the rewards are still the same. Despite our car-oriented America, we ride because we know it’s a better choice for us, for our community and for our planet. And yes, we are all a lot healthier when we use our own power to get us to our destination. No spandex or bike shorts… I just wear what I have on, maybe throw on some rain or snow gear if necessary, and ride to work.

The feeling that I might be contributing in a tiny way to a better community and better planet makes me happy. The bi-product of my daily self-powered mobility ventures is, of course, better health and fitness. By no means would I call myself an athlete, but my legs are strong and my body is surely in better shape considering I bike between 2,000 and 4,000 miles each year.

Perhaps the cyclists might convince more people if they left out the virtue signalling and rhetoric about "better choices."  For my part, in the 28 years I was on faculty, I was never more than a fifteen minute bicycle ride from my office, but on snowy days I'd use the car.

I MISS RINGLING BARNUM.

In the absence of The Greatest Show on Earth, all we have is the impeachment "Hey Rube!"  Power Line's Steven Hayward watches it, so you don't have to.

The second “tell” of the week are the two articles of impeachment themselves. As Andy McCarthy notes, they are exceedingly weak: an improper use of power in his Ukraine phone call, and obstruction of the congressional investigation. That’s it? That’s all they got? Why only two?

Or, to put it more crudely, the first article accuses the president of prospectively rigging the 2020 election, something that the Democrats could laugh off, simply by nominating a sufficiently strong candidate.  The second article accuses the president of requiring Congress to make a case for requesting the documents they believe are incriminating.  I recall suffering through a year and a half of Watergate inquiries, and much of that time was taken up in Congress requesting, the president saying no, counsel for Congress going to court, Judge Sirica ruling, counsel for the president appealing, ad infinitum, or at least for two summers.

[O]ne reason for limiting impeachment to these two weak items is that it makes it more likely the Republican Senate will make quick work of the matter and perhaps even dismiss the case on Day One of the Senate trial. Chief Justice Roberts won’t even have to skip lunch that day. And this becomes a political weapon for the Democrats for the election, where they are desperate to regain control of the Senate. They will tie every Republican senator who votes to dismiss impeachment to Trump. I’ve thought all along that Senate election politics played as big a role in the calculations and timing of impeachment as any of Trump’s actual deeds.

Here, too, the Senate becomes that saucer for cooling the overheated tea from the cup of the House.  There are Republican true believers who would like to put the whole California Democrat delegation and their Deep State useful idiots in the dock, but apparently the Senate is having none of that.

If the House had included additional impeachment counts, it would put pressure on the Senate for a longer and more substantive trial. Here’s where the two weak charges become another “tell” that Democrats are bluffing and playing pure politics. Do Democrats want a longer Senate trial? Ask yourself this: if the Senate holds a three or four-week trial starting in January, requiring the silent attendance of all senators (as the Senate rules stipulate), what happens to the presidential campaigns of Warren, Klobuchar, Booker, and Sanders? You know they want to be pounding the pavement in Iowa and New Hampshire, and not sitting silently in the Senate chamber. This is one reason Cocaine Mitch ought to threaten a long, six-day a week trial starting three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, just to see how Democrats respond. And then start spreading the word that impeachment is actually a DNC plot to smooth the way for Joe Biden’s nomination, just as the DNC tilted the playing field for Hillary against Bernie in 2016. Fun times!

Lastly, there is the question of whether the Senate ought to have a trial in which they call Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, the “anonymous” whistleblower, and others as witnesses. Trump is said to favor this, while Mitch McConnell is said to be against it in favor of getting the whole thing over with quickly. He may be right about this, but it is certainly worth deploying his own very good poker face to suggest that just maybe the Senate will call on the Bidens for an accounting of things.

Had anybody told me six years ago that I might be nostalgic for the days of wrangling over the debt ceiling, I would likely have been surprised.