DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP.

The Northern Star offers students hope that they don't have to transfer from Huskie Bus to Commuter Streamliner at Elburn.  "Metra could come to DeKalb following new study."  I'll take Analysis Paralysis for $200.

The DeKalb City Council gave the green light Monday to fund a transportation study that could bring a Metra train line and station to the city.

The city council voted unanimously in favor of the study to be conducted by Sam Schwartz Consulting LLC to assess the feasibility of the potential train station.

The $98,379 study will determine the current traffic patterns of DeKalb commuters, the number of residents that could benefit from public transportation and major sources of traffic like NIU, according to the project.

A sad prediction: the study will turn up some small benefit to the trains, but the necessary taxing district will come a cropper in the rest of the county.  "When I hired out at Northern Illinois University, local thinking was that the Metra commuter train would be coming to DeKalb sometime in the next ten years."  So it was in 2019, so it was in 2010, so it might always be.  Never mind that Genoa and Belvidere fight over the scraps that might be available for Amtrak service returning to Rockford.

EXPERT FAILURE IN THE ABSTRACT, FAILURE IN THE CONCRETE.

By their failures, argues Spiked's Fraser Myers, shall we know our Wise Experts.

As we enter 2023, we desperately need to cut the technocrats down to size. The great lie of technocracy is that the experts are best placed to make decisions in the national interest. That they somehow stand above the wayward passions of the electorate or the ideology of elected representatives. In reality, technocrats tend to simply pass off their own prejudices as superior insight.

That's the vulgar version of public choice theory. Duke's Michael Munger has thought through the vulgarities, with the following elaboration.

If Progressives understood that the politics of democracy meant that market processes were no worse, and might be better, than elections, why did they favor expanding government? The answer is that Progressives did not, do not, favor democracy, at least not majoritarian democracy. They favor the suppression of individual discretion in favor of centralized planning, government control and direction of resources, and the suppression of individual discretion.

It’s the Progressive “social contract”: government experts know what voters should want, and would want if they were correctly informed and had altruistic motives. Real voters fall short of this ideal, of course, but that’s why voters should want to give up their own power to make free (wrong) choices, in favor of a priesthood of technocrats who will run things.

In that "priesthood of technocrats" there's likely millennia of institutional memory. Did the people who were less effective fighters agree to become servants, later subjects, of the more effective fighters?  Did the people less attuned to the clues Nature provided for all to see agree to support the people more attuned as ambassadors to their gods?  In that latter post I concluded, "I might be off base suggesting that the Technocratic Vision is contrary to longer term tendencies. I suggest, however, that some organizing framework is superior to none."  Professor Munger got to the heart of the matter.  "Progressives mistrust democracy, and always have."

So it always is with philosopher kings.  Eventually even the most loyal of subjects finds it hard to square his prior beliefs with the accumulating evidence.  "Not only is Joe Biden the oldest president in U.S. history, but he has presided over a period of widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country under Democratic Party rule."  I cannot square that "widespread dissatisfaction" with "Democratic rule".  Yes, there are compelling reasons for people of a conservative, right-populist, or libertarian bent to say the country is on the wrong track, but the very conflict within the Democrat coalition between the old school technocrats and the contemporary deconstructionists who suspect there's too much toxic masculinity in linear thinking also might be reason to venture a "wrong track" judgement.  It's right there in the Democrats' succession plans.  "But in making [Kamala Harris] an avatar of the party's future, the party has made her problems their own too, embracing box-checking at the expense of political or administrative competence."  That's being kind.  Their incompetence is their diversity.  Let us celebrate.

There is nothing funny about Joe Biden. Every day he remains in office he does incalculable damage to the country. The Biden matter is likely the least of it. He has dissolved our southern border, prioritized the climate madness, furthered the woke insanity, weakened our military, promoted a gusher of federal spending, and so on. His administration is shoddy and destructive. He is personally corrupt.

Where, though, is the message that will get him turfed out?  It's so easy to substitute "Trump" for "Biden" in that passage, and you know that the palace guard media and Donk strategists will do so.

A SELF-FISKING.

Jerry "Why Evolution is True" Coyne finds a terminally silly jargon-laden pedagogy paper, and a more efficient way of fisking it.  "I’m rejecting both ways today in favor of The Third Way: let the paper reveal its own ideology, postmodern craziness, and authoritarianism by just giving quotes."

The abstract itself gets off to a good start.  "This article presents an argument on the importance of teaching science with a feminist framework and defines it by acknowledging that all knowledge is historically situated and is influenced by social power and politics."  Knowledge has to be "historically situated" in the sense that all learning is cumulative, and builds on that which is established previously; the role of knowledge in creating or distorting social power and politics suggests there is not a single direction of causation.  That "feminist framework," however, suggests a tight prior trammelling inquiry:  "We present this work as an example of a transformative pedagogical model to dismantle White supremacy in Chemistry."  I wonder what the reaction of the authors would be to "What evidence would motivate you to revise your priors?"  It probably would not be reasoned.  Check out the Testament of Faith that follows.

When scientifically established facts, such as the nonbinary nature of both sex and gender are seen by students of science as a belief, one might ask: Are we being true to scientific knowledge? We use this student comment as a reflection of the subjectivity of how the pedagogical decisions are made in teaching “true science” vs what existing scientific knowledge tells us. This has resulted in the propagation of scientific miseducation for generations.

Two-four-six-eight, time to trans-substantiate.  Also time for the economics faculty at East [North] Carolina to time-slip the chemistry department.

In this article we describe the development, implementation, and student experience from a special topic course in chemistry, Science and Feminism, as a disruptive tool to challenge the status quo in Chemistry. Using Critical Race Theory and intersectional feminism as the framework, this course aimed at creating an intellectual as well as physical space for STEM students at East Carolina University (ECU) where they could explore their identities and how these intersect with the knowledge base and the pedagogy of science by looking at these from historical, political, and feminist lens. The other aim was to shine light, through this process, how scientific epistemology and culture have strong links with capitalism, enslavement, colonization, and exploitation of female-bodied folks. We provide the historical context of teaching this class in our institution, development of the course syllabus, assignments, and evaluations adopted for this course over the past two years as a template for future course development.

Go to Why Evolution is True for the rest, which is a convex combination of the mock-with-glee and fisk-each-line approach to online commentary.  Apparently in the Church of Intersectionality the "historical context" can be carried off without much knowledge of the history of political economy.  But call the project "disruptive" and that might be truth in packaging, although not in the good connotation of the word.  Additionally, it's possible to pass the course with no knowledge of mathematics.  That is, unless somebody is running another Sokal hoax.

Unit 3 explored the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism. To problematize time as a linear social construct, the Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of wave-particle duality was utilized. The end of the unit assignments was writing a reflection from all the readings and participation in a debate with the topic: past is never dead, it is not even past. The students also had the option of watching the 2020 movie, Antebellum. However, the instructor was flexible on this assignment as some of the African American students did not want to watch it and be triggered. They wrote a reflection on a book on race and gender that they had read.

"Flexible" is the new underwater basketweaving.

The paper concludes, predictably, more like an Order of Worship than a scientific paper, with a confession of sins, namely, the oh-so-popular land acknowledgement.

Perhaps I should append one to future posts:  Cold Spring Shops headquarters is on land that was in Wisconsin Territory before Illinois became a state.  We recognize the labor applied by those settlers marking the trails that contemporary Illinoisans use to visit Lake Geneva, the Dells, and Door County, and to watch their teams get owned in Green Bay.

THEY VANISHED IN THE UKRAINE.

Nameless numbers on a list that was later misplaced.

Hundreds of Russian draftees reportedly fear they have been sent on a suicide mission by top military officials who are planning to conceal their deaths through an inventive new scheme: changing records to show they are part of a regiment that doesn’t exist.

“They assigned us to regiment 228–such a regiment does not exist,” one of the men told the independent news outlet Sota. “They want to send us to a hot spot tomorrow with machine guns [to go] against tanks, drones, and mortars on minefields. We’re just cannon fodder.”

That happened often, according to Boris Pasternak as interpreted by Alec Guinness and Julie Christie, in Stalin era.  It's not unknown to evil emperors outside the movies.  "The men described manipulation of their official paperwork that effectively rendered them lost without a trace."

Does Vladimir Putin have a garage in one of his dachas where he keeps Corvette and box of official papers?

REGIONAL RAIL RETURNING TO WISCONSIN?

With the coming of Amtrak the privately-operated passenger trains serving Madison and Green Bay made their last runs.  Over the years, Wisconsin politicians, primarily Democrats, have sought the return of passenger trains connecting Madison with Milwaukee and on to Chicago, and with a Democrat in the White House (with a transportation secretary from McKinsey and here to help you) they're wishing for one again.  Republican politicians, including former governor and later Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, did support the Madison train.  There is a positive case for extending the Hiawatha service to Madison, but it's on local Passenger Rail advocates to make that case.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 18,068

From the beginning of this series, a year and a half ago, we noted, "The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health."  More hazardous than the latest coronavirus variant, which, apparently, more readily evades the latest vaccines, but appears to have mutated into something that doesn't "appear to be more serious" than the earlier mutations.

The verdict is in.  "Sweden Wins! Country That Refused Lockdown and Kept Schools Open Has Lowest Pandemic Mortality in the World."  Not only that, the Swedes did better on excess deaths from causes other than coronavirus.  That despite Worldometers reporting more infections but fewer attributable deaths in Illinois.  In the United States, the restrictions themselves were deadly. "The 'experts' and leaders who pushed these failed policies need to be held accountable so they can never perpetuate an injustice like this again."

The emergency decrees for the United States taken together, as well as Illinois, remain in effect, if in modified form.  The emergency is over.  The emergency powers should be rescinded.

These posts will continue until the emergency decrees end.  This is what a majority of Illinoisans voted for.  I retain the right to call attention to what they've inflicted on themselves, and it's going to be fun come January, when two years of inflation adjustments to the motor fuel tax kick in, and later in the year, when the sales tax moratorium on groceries expires.  In addition, the winter fearmongering about coronavirus, flu, and other respiratory ailments is under way again, and I'm seeing more people masking up in stores or riding alone in their automobiles.  Meanwhile, letter carriers in Chicago are being hunted for their master keys to cluster mailboxes in apartment complexes and office parks that don't have individual curbside or in-house delivery.  The most recent flight of fantasy out of Springfield, which will do nothing about that sort of crime, is a ban on some firearms.  "The law is hard to defend on logical, practical, or constitutional grounds."  There are county sheriffs who give a low priority to enforcing it.  The potbellied dictator issues empty threats to have such sheriffs fired.  As is to be expected, people stocked up on weapons ahead of the law, which might not hold up in court, being signed.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.  With local, state, and federal governments in the United States changing the way they count infections (and they might be rethinking how they classify deaths) I'm not sure how valid any numbers, even from a service consistently used from month to month, is.

The latest report from Sweden counts 2,697,840 infections, up by 47,471 from last month, and 22,610 deaths, a change of 929 from the preceding report.

The latest report from Illinois counts 3,969,832 infections, an increase of 763,031 over last month and 40,678 deaths, adding 272 to the Pritzker Body Count in one month.  End the emergency decrees.

The most recent tally of vaccinations gives around 26 million doses of the various vaccines, initial course or the various boosters, or perhaps reformulations, administered as of January 13.  The state also appears to have ended their count of the scary variants, although the page has been updated to January 1 to show a mix of Omicron variants circulating.

At the end of the fall semester, the governor trailed by 19,204.

At Veterans Day, the governor trailed by 19,284.

At Columbus Day, the governor trailed by 19,436.

As Oktoberfest season began, the governor trailed by 19,467.

At the start of the academic year, the governor trailed by 19,611.

At Bastille Day, the governor trailed by 19,567.

At Flag Day, the governor trailed by 19,295.

At Syttende Mai, the governor trailed by 19,149.

At Patriots Day, the governor trailed by 19,243.

At St. Patrick's Day, the governor trailed by 19,580.

At Valentine's Day, the governor trailed by 19,533.

At the National Day of Service, the governor trailed by 17,062.

Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week has been growing only slowly.  The details for earlier in 2021 and the end of 2020 are on page 2.

THE FARCE THAT IS LIBERATING TOLERANCE.

My old "The Burden of Sixties Ideas" alluded to a distinction between reactionary and revolutionary violence, as well as to the concept of liberating tolerance, necessary because pure tolerance gives too much voice to defenders of institutions or traditions the Anointed consider oppressive.  Once upon a time, people with intellectual integrity could address those concepts in a serious way.  "At some point these acts of brazen viciousness [scaling back the public sector, to the less aggravated] are going to lead to a renewed philosophical interest in the question of when acts of political violence are morally justified, an issue that has, oddly, not been widely addressed in political philosophy since Locke."

THE ROUNDHOUSE FOREMAN DOES NOT RULE THE ROUNDHOUSE.

It is often the case that a railroad shop facility is guarded by an 0-2-2-0 Mouser, and sometimes that Mouser becomes famous.  There's a rainbow bridge at the final summit.

Dirt, who became a celebrity in 15 years as the shop cat at the Nevada Northern Railway, has died, the railroad has announced on its Facebook page.

The orange and white male cat was adopted as a stray kitten by shop crews in 2008 and became famous for his coal-dust-tinted fur, photogenic nature, and regular appearance during shop tours and other special events.

The cat was at first wary of railroaders.

Dirt was discovered in the railroad’s locomotive shop all alone as a kitten in 2008. Not wanting the little cat to starve, the shop crews started providing him with cans of tuna and soft cat food. It took time, but after a while, the cat started to trust the workers, and shortly after that, the master mechanic brought him to a vet for a checkup.

After a while, the cat realized that the warmest place in the entire shop was in the cabs of the railroad’s two steam locomotives, NNRy 4-6-0 40 and 2-8-0 93. Because of that, the cat’s fur started getting dirty so the crews nicknamed it “Dirtbag.” Later it was shortened to “Dirt.”

“The engine house and machine shop are very dirty, noisy environments. In addition to the locomotives and railroad cars being moved in and out, repair work goes on all the time. Dirt got very wise, very fast, quickly figuring out where not to be when locomotives and cars were moving, or work was being performed,” the railroad’s staff wrote.

Later, he figured out the routine of the roundhouse enough to come out and show off for tourists.  "To commemorate Dirt, the railroad plans on having two life-size bronzes cast of the cat. One will serve as his gravestone, the other will be placed in the machine shop, so Dirt can continue watching over things."

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Pay attention to internal migration.  "[Democrat-run states] are also beset with crime and homelessness, and they tend to have more oppressive, authoritarian governments, a fact that became evident during covid."

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

ANOTHER UNDENIABLE TRUTH?

Perhaps it is inevitable that school lunches suck.

School lunches are still unappetizing.  Once upon a time, the Milwaukee Public Schools must have had a creative writer on the payroll, to make mystery meat on a stick sound good.  In the menu published in the Thursday Milwaukee Journal, it would be mock chicken leg with a savory gravy, and it might be accompanied by golden glow salad on crisp lettuce -- that being a concoction of orange jello with carrot shavings.

I wrote that ten years ago, concluding,

A lot has changed in fifty years. The Thursday newspaper might on occasion mention Italian pizza with sausage and cheese and a tossed salad. That's what everybody got, and if it was assembled out of government surplus ingredients, all we could do was joke about it.

Perhaps not just joke, you might have heard of s*** on a stick, right?

Let's see if the current crop of students has more success.

For a year, high school students across Milwaukee have been advocating for better meals at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).

On Thursday, students took that fight to MPS’ school board meeting as the board voted on a resolution to implement a “School Lunch Justice Task Force.”

That task force is aimed at allowing students a seat at the table when it comes to decisions and implementation of changes for school meals.

Eliza Palacios is a junior at Alexander Hamilton High school and a part of Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES), a student-led organization at the forefront of the fight for better school meals.

“I have a lot of friends that don't have a lot of food at home, and they depend on the school lunches,” shared Palacios. “And sometimes they won't even eat the school lunches, so they'll just go home hungry.”

I remember the Hamilton of years ago, when it was not yet a poverty pocket, in which an awful lot of fresh apples were discarded uneaten at lunch.  Those might have been locally sourced.  Back then, the school lunches were sensitive to cultural and religious needs: fish stick Fridays.  Probably frozen.

THE FACT-CHECKING ENTERPRISE, INDIFFERENT TO TRADE-OFFS.

Just for fun, I posted some captioned train photographs to Facebook.  The first showed an active four track railroad.

Yes, I was having some fun, because there was a second, less railroad-magazine worthy captioned image I also posted.

The railroad magazine editors would prefer either some sort of arty shot, or a well-lit image of the motive power and the consist.  My motive, though, was to see how Facebook's rivet counters would react.  Sure enough, within a few minutes of my posting it, there was a "partially misleading" label on it, complete with a link to what the algorithm thinks is the proper nuance.

Posts on social media suggest electric cars do not help lower climate-changing emissions because people rely on coal power to charge them. This is misleading; data shows that they still produce fewer emissions over their lifespan than gasoline-powered vehicles, even in regions where coal is burned to produce electricity for the grid.

That reminds me of a train-off petition filed by the South Shore Line in the early 1970s in which the regulator concluded that, with so few commuters using the electric cars, the additional exhaust fumes from automobiles would for the most part be offset from the reduced exhaust fumes from power plants supplying the electricity.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS.

College Sports, Incorporated granted players extra years of eligibility during the coronavirus shutdowns, with limited and restricted provision for additional athletic scholarships.  Thus, players on successful teams find themselves in the transfer protocols, retaining eligibility but putting their coaches in a bind.  Five Ohio State volleyball players opted to transfer, for example.  "Basically, the Buckeye seniors were caught in a roster crunch caused by the NCAA granting an extra year of eligibility to athletes affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but ending an amnesty for programs over scholarship limits after this season."  

It seems odd, unless you understand the economic way of thinking.  "'If I make a choice to keep all five on my roster, on scholarship, then I'm telling incoming freshman or players in my program, 'Hey, sorry. Not yours anymore,'' [coach Jen Oldenberg] said. 'You can do that, and I had a choice to do that, and I chose not to do that – not because I don't want these five. I want them forever.'" They can be friends for life, but eligibility runs out, and it helps to have the next player up in the program and prepared.

THERE IS SOMETHING ABSURD ABOUT A POLITY GOVERNED BY A VANGUARD.

That's an observation I made a year ago, in a meditation that concluded, "Put another way, when the relatively disengaged voters are paying more attention to politics, that's when you have a problem."  Study your history, dear reader.

MAKE HIGHER EDUCATION HIGHER AGAIN.

Maybe it's the continuing intrusion of special education, not the corona tyranny or the Diversity Weenies, that's wrecking faculty morale.  One administrator has thoughts.  "The reasons cited for the departures include burnout, low compensation, lack of remote or hybrid work options, and recent racial and political unrest—which places pressure on workplace relationships and complicates people’s sense of belonging. In addition, employees are being lured away by more competitive packages from rival colleges or organizations in other fields."  Now might not be the time to apologize for being too selective.  You won't find that in his essay, which deteriorates into a jumble of the usual buzzwords of culture studies and diversity indoctrination.  You might find some answers in working the problem.

There are plenty of reasons to worry about the future of academe. Paul Musgrave, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, captures many of them in an essay titled “The Season of Our Professorial Discontent.” He imagines a prolonged state of “Eternal Covid” in which he spends “decades delivering indifferent lectures to indifferent classes as the price of submitting little-read articles to niche journals.” If he can’t kindle the same enthusiasm in students that he brings to his teaching, Musgrave fears he will become “just a dispenser of grades.”

Indeed, the drop in student performance during the pandemic’s Zoom era has only continued after the return to in-person teaching. Faculty members often feel pressure from administrators to lower expectations for students who are struggling to meet deadlines and sometimes skipping class altogether. Earlier this year, New York University fired Maitland Jones Jr., a respected researcher and teacher, in part because students had filed a petition protesting the rigor of his organic-chemistry course. The story resonated nationally because many faculty members feel similarly trapped between disengaged students and provosts preoccupied with retention.

Eternal corona tyranny with eternal protest. Looks like a good time for academicians to think about model railroading.

THE POLITICAL AGGREGATION PROBLEM ALMOST RESULTS IN FISTICUFFS.

The past week or so has offered a salutary reproach to people who will see in the so-called two party system of the United States a stability missing from parliamentary nations, where it's bad form to bring up the Italians, the Israelis seem bent on confirming the wheeze about four congregations and six political parties being present at the minyan, and Queen Elizabeth's last official act was to ask Liz Truss to form a government only to put King Charles in the position of asking Rishi Sunak to form a government.

In the United States, in part, I submit, because the political bundles are too big, the two major parties exist to paper over differences, often under a "lesser of two evils" sort of rubric.  "That elections tend to devolve to a binary choice, and disaffected voters are often reluctant to reject a binary choice between bundles that are each horrible in their own way makes the [re-election of incumbents] more likely to be bad."  I predicted that the slim Democratic majorities taking office in 2021 in Washington would devolve into faction fighting, and the allegedly transformative legislation that came out of the 117th Congress was at the margin of one or two Democrat senators from contested states, and probably filled with earmarks and carve-outs to hold that House coalition together.

A Washington Post contributor, Perry Bacon, contends that there are "four political parties stuffed into a two-party system."  There's nothing magical about there being four coalitions, and the way in which they align themselves can change over time.  In the past two weeks, though, we might have seen that forming a government isn't as easy as past experience suggests.  I know that our civics-books view of governance is one in which the president is the head of government, but the president cannot sign any bills into law until both houses of Congress agree on what to send to the White House, and Congress can't pass anything until the House convenes, and the House can't be sworn in until they name a speaker.  Might we think of the Speaker of the House as the true head of government?

ADVANTAGE, COLD SPRING SHOPS.

The Principle of Parsimony wins again.  "Russian Twitter Trolls Did Not Throw the 2016 Election to Trump."  Recall, dear reader, there were only twelve Russian spies.

Yes, [Donald Trump] did outwork all the Republican establishment hopefuls during the primary, and he did outwork Hillary Clinton, and it didn't take a Russian operative to put "basket of deplorables" and the other hectoring, condescending material into Mrs Clinton's fundraising and campaigning.

But is anyone really surprised, let alone scandalized, that foreign intelligence services do what foreign intelligence services do, which is to say, steal secrets and plant stories?  If the Soviets, er, Russians, didn't do that, that would be reason to send generals to gulag and bust colonels back to sergeants.  And there are likely more than twelve spies, er, intelligence officers, working that project.  And if Democrats were careless with their internet security, relative to Republicans, well, that's business.

Further, does anybody believe that Bernie Sanders supporters wouldn't have figured out that the Democratic National Committee was rigging things for the Dowager Empress, even without John Podesta's leaked e-mails, no matter who got them, or how they got them?  Cripes, I had the story in August 2015, before a single caucus took a vote.

Taken together, I evaluate the situation as intelligence services doing what intelligence services do, voters doing what voters do, and Mr Trump outworked Mrs Clinton.  Never attribute to malice what can be more easily ascribed to overconfidence.

Reason's Robby Soave offers a supporting argument.

This observation is well-supported by a few key findings. Just 1 percent of Twitter users absorbed about 70 percent of the so-called Russian disinformation, meaning that a tiny fraction of overall users encountered actual Russian trolls. These users were overwhelmingly partisan Republicans; there is no reason to think that masses of gullible swing voters who might have voted for Hillary Clinton were hoodwinked by Russia and opted for Trump instead.

Again, dear reader, you saw it here first.

Doesn't make it right: doesn't excuse the GRU, or whatever they call it these days, that CIA does it better; doesn't even make a case for moral equivalence. [Attempting to influence elections is] what intelligence services do. At the margin, it's probably not easily-influenced voters that carry the day.

I know I repeat myself: Stalin would have purged those twelve spies for their ineffectiveness. Robby Soave, again: "[T]he amount of time, money, and effort Russia spent on influencing social media users was a drop in the bucket compared with the work being done by the Trump and Clinton campaigns themselves, as well as the attention being paid to the candidates by U.S. media outlets."  If anything, the confirmations from these recent studies suggest a lack of intellectual curiosity among the pundit class.  "The news probably came as a surprise to many readers; unfortunately, mainstream and liberal consumers of political news have been conditioned to believe that misinformation—often of foreign and Russian origin—is the source of countless modern maladies. But time and time again, data tell a different story."

THE VAPIDITY OF CULTURAL STUDIES.

Scientific American recently published an editorial by a Duke anthropologist who is only the most recent academic to suggest there's a racialized gladiator economy in football.  That essay has come in for the mockery it deserves, including from former professional football coach Tony Dungy, who, alone amongst NBC's panel of football pundits, correctly picked the Detroit Lions to win in Green Bay and keep the Packers out of the playoffs.  "As a black man and former NFL player I can say this article is absolutely ridiculous."

It's against my better judgement, but let me take the essay seriously, starting with the author's credentials.  "Tracie Canada is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University. Her research uses sport to theorize race, kinship, care, gender and the performing body, and she is currently working on a book project about the experiences of Black college football players. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia."  That's a misuse of the term "theorize".  It's possible to have theories about the evolution of race, or kinship ties, or sex roles, or performance, and to look for confirming evidence in sports, using rules of inference that are part of your discipline's discourse practice.  Theory first, then evidence.

XENOPHOBIA IN WOODLAWN?

Chicago's rookie mayor Lori Lightfoot would like money from Springfield or Washington or a magic helicopter to provide shelter for the illegal immigrants being sent by governors, Republican and Democrat alike, to sanctuary cities run by Democrats.

Declaring yourself a sanctuary city costs nothing, as long as you have a national government that is protecting its borders. Let the national government change its policies, and all of a sudden, accusing state governors who are bearing the brunt of the illegal crossings as "racist" doesn't do anything for the material or moral condition of the people who request transportation to Chicago.

It gets more interesting.  Decades of flight of productive people of all callings, colors, and creeds from Illinois, including Chicago, mean there are idle public buildings including schools that might serve as temporary shelter until the new arrivals connect with their local sponsors.

HOT TIME, SUMMER IN THE CITY.

Heat, plus humidity, plus crowding, might lead to the distemper The Lovin' Spoonful alluded to in their song.  "All around, people looking half-dead / Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head."  That is, unless you're Julia Conley at Common Dreams, where despite the heat, it will not be alright at night, because hotter temperatures lead to less impulse control, or something.

Researchers in the U.S. have linked the climate crisis and the extreme weather patterns it causes to the country's epidemic of gun violence in a first-of-its-kind analysis, showing that thousands of shootings in the U.S. in recent years were attributable to higher-than-average temperatures.

As Environment Journal reported Tuesday, experts at Boston University School of Public Health and University of Washington School of Social Work analyzed 116,000 shootings in 100 of the country's most populous cities between 2015 and 2020 and found that 7,973 took place during periods of unseasonable heat, concluding that about 7% of shootings could be attributed to extreme heat.

The research, which was originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open in December, found that the Northeast and Midwest saw the greatest increases in gun violence on days that were unseasonably hot, but the trend was observed across the country.

Predictably, women and minorities are hardest hit.

"It could be that heat causes stress, which makes people more likely to use aggression," said Dr. Jonathan Jay, a co-author of the study and faculty member of Boston University's Center for Climate and Health. "Or it could be that people are more likely to get out on warmer days and have more interactions, which creates more opportunities for conflict and violence. Most likely, it's a combination of both."

While it is the first analysis of the correlation between the climate crisis and gun violence in the U.S., the study offers the latest evidence of a dynamic that has been previously reported: violent incidents, including domestic and gender-based violence, increase during and after extreme weather events driven by the climate emergency.

As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2022 identified a link between extreme weather and domestic violence, while The Lancet published an analysis of more than 40 studies showing "an increase in one or several [gender-based violence] forms during or after extreme events, often related to economic instability, food insecurity, mental stress, disrupted infrastructure, increased exposure to men, tradition, and exacerbated gender inequality."

It's difficult to capture the effect of deconstructing mediating institutions on changing behavior, although that's not something I'm going to rule out based on what those studies are reporting.  It's easier, if you write for Common Dreams, to assert that people lack agency when it's convenient.

Researchers at Boston University and Washington University said their new study makes the case both for lawmakers to pass gun control and climate action measures and for local investment in heat mitigation strategies, such as increasing tree cover in "urban heat islands."

When introducing the Saving Hazardous and Declining Environments (SHADE) Act in 2021, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) noted that many formerly redlined urban neighborhoods are on average 4.68°F hotter than non-redlined areas, "due to reduced tree cover and increased asphalt or concrete surfaces."

"We know that segregation and disinvestment lead communities of color, especially Black communities, to have greater exposure to adverse environmental conditions that contribute to gun violence risk, such as abandoned buildings, liquor stores, lack of green space, and more intense urban heat islands," Jay said in a statement in December.

Heat mitigation strategies could be a crucial part of an effort that is "part racial justice, part climate change mitigation, and part gun violence prevention," he added.

I can't help but wonder, though, whether Common Dreams writers turn agency on or off as it suits them. Consider a recent lament from Thom Hartmann. "When will Republican voters figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by Republican politicians?"  Nowhere in his column, or in Julia Conley's, though, do we see mention of poor white guys behaving badly in the summer.  It's easier for him to slag on those voters for having reactionary attitudes.  "My bet is that as long as Democrats continue to welcome racial and gender minorities into their party, Republican voters will stay with their nearly-all-white politicians."  Perhaps, as long as people who argue with, but vote for Democrats, continue to look for external causes for the behavior of people protected as racial and gender minorities, whilst scolding people not-so-protected, Republican voters will avoid voting for Democrats.  "What do you think happens when you encourage dysfunction for some people and mau-mau others? How many experiments against reality can you run?"  No matter how uncomfortable the heat, or the cold might be.

THE END OF JAPAN'S INTERURBAN ERA.

Once upon a time, electric interurban railroads offered cheap, frequent service linking hamlets, small towns, cities, and stopping at rural crossroads to pick up passengers or parcels, including milk cans and nursery stock.  A number of those companies also offered city streetcar service in communities that these days are lucky to have a ride-share provider or two.  Hicks Car Works devotes a section to such companies just in Illinois.  City cars in Dixon or Belvidere or Peoria?  Yes.

So, too, are there interurban railroads in Japan, for now.

Like many small railway lines across Japan's countryside, the 60-year-old trains that ply this route are a loss-maker, but [Katsunori] Takemoto has found a way to keep the business afloat.

With a combination of savvy marketing partnerships with pop stars and branded souvenirs, the president of the Choshi Electric Railway navigated the firm into the black in 2021, while helping promote the local region.

"I feel strongly that this is the mission of all local trains. We want to serve as advertising vehicles for communities," Takemoto told AFP.

The same sorts of internal migration and infrastructure spending that appeared in the United States a century ago, when the interurban network began to decline, manifested themselves more recently in Japan.

The rural lines are legacies of Japan's economic boom through the 1970s but failed to adapt to rural depopulation, as younger people left for cities and some villages emptied altogether.

Infrastructure like city halls and hospitals is increasingly built along main roads, with visitors expected to drive rather than take trains.

Did you think those Japanese companies built those Toyotas and the like solely for export? Or that town plans would forever be a central business district on an electric line?  On the other hand, as we noted a few years ago, the Japanese interurbans are able to invest in real estate and deal in services unrelated to their railroad business, which is contrary to several national policies in the United States.

For now though, lines like Takemoto's are turning to alternatives to stay afloat.

His Choshi Electric Railway makes 80 percent of its revenue from non-train operations, including baking and selling its popular soy sauce-soaked crackers.

The company has sold everything from corn puffs to slices of railway track, and Takemoto aggressively promotes the line on television, joking about his cash-strapped firm with well-rehearsed self-deprecating puns.

Choshi Electric have even run haunted trains, in the fashion of our preservation railways. They're not yet ready to quit.  Meanwhile, it's possible our transportation policy poobahs will rediscover the interurbans.