RESTORING THE CLASSIC WOODEN INTERURBAN.

After abandonment, the wooden cars of the Chicago Aurora and Elgin could be obtained cheaply, and Kuhlman car 315 made its way to the Rockhill Trolley Museum, which operates on a stretch of East Broad Top Railroad track, and after years of deliberation, that museum has been restoring that car to its as-built appearance.

Unattributed photo retrieved from Railfan and Railroad.

We recently noted Jewett-built car 316, similarly backdated, with a different paint scheme, at our nearby Fox River Trolley Museum.

Another Jewett car, 320 at the Old Threshers grounds in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, has also had its arch windows restored.

The Old Threshers hold their annual gathering Labor Day weekend, and the other preservation railways will be operating as summer winds down.

After Labor Day, the vintage cars might be back in the car barns for winter work.  Enjoy the remaining days of the preservation railway season.

LET THE KIDS PLAY.

Last week, Red State's Terri Christoph urged, "Leave Sophie Alone: Conservatives Don't Need to Co-Opt Cunningham."  Let her cook, and don't let's color her appeal by tying it to the "right's influencer ecosystem."  So too, suggests Dan Wolken, with her team-mate Caitlin Clark.  "Given a clear lane to weigh in and plant her flag on one side of the issue or the other, Clark did what she always does on an inflammatory topic: Hit the eject button as fast as she can."

As we noted in a previous post using the same headline, "In women's sports, though, you can claim not to be interested in the culture wars, but the culture wars are interested in you."  Red State's Jerry Wilson, for instance, would rather keep pushing.  "The WNBA Delivers a Glorious Opportunity to Preach the Conservative Evangel."

In part, he continues, because the league's coaches keep stepping in it.  That prompted Clay Travis, who, fittingly for a radio talker given the Rush Limbaugh franchise, demonstrated absurdity by being absurd.

That's boosted the morale of Militant Normals since he dropped his plan to staff a "WNBA" roster with crossers as well as his challenge to set up a charity match between the Las Vegas Aces and a high school boy's championship team, proceeds to go to Tunnel to Towers.

It might be, though, that Miss Cunningham wouldn't take much pushing to take a side.

It’s not clear when exactly Cunningham decided to make her political views her personality, though she’d been nicknamed MAGA Barbie as early as her college days at the University of Missouri, likely because she followed and interacted with Candace Owens and other conservative names on social media. Unfortunately for everyone, it seems her latest nightmare collab is with Riley Gaines, the biggest anti-trans gadfly for MAGA sports.

Yes, Riley Gaines is on board with the Militant Normals, and former sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya is running for United States Senate from Minnesota, and it might be that former Levi's executive and onetime gymnast Jennifer Sey will be pushed into that ambit.  It's more likely, though, that each of those women stands where she does because each was mugged by reality while the identity politics mob suggested there was nothing to see.

CONSPICUOUSNESS TRUMPS COMPETENCE.

In The Daily Economy, Surse Pierpoint asks, "If the economic argument was already lost by 1917, and the Soviet revolution supplied prestige rather than proof, what explains the durability of Marxist categories in Western universities, long after the calculation debate was settled and the planned economies it inspired had produced the most devastating body counts of the twentieth century?"

I've reduced his argument to a clickbaity headline.  Take a long march through the institutions, dear reader, and it might make sense.

What is not in dispute is the strategy itself and its adoption across the postwar academic left: if the economic argument could not be won, the institutions that credential, publish, and platform could be occupied instead.

This is where a discipline should ask an empirical question rather than an ideological one. Occupying an institution is not the same as running it well, and a strategy built around capturing credentialing bodies produces a specific, predictable personnel problem. Peter Turchin’s structural-demographic theory, developed across Ages of Discord and subsequent work, describes what happens when a society produces far more credentialed aspirants to elite status than there are elite positions to hold them: law graduates, doctorate holders, activist-class professionals, all competing for a fixed and often shrinking number of visible slots.

I'm not sure "better to be outrageous and wrong than extraordinarily good" works as a get-hired strategy, but there it is.  "Extremity is a cheap, reliable signal in a market where everyone already has the degree."

The author's focus is on the popularity of potted Marxism in domestic politics these days.  A variant of it might be at work in academic hiring, although perhaps it helps to be conspicuously controversial and to belong to one or another of the personnel office's set of preferred hires.

THE DEMOCRATIC SPLITTISTS OF AMERICA.

It is the nature of Puritan congregations and socialist movements to read heretics out of the congregation, and surely the heirs to Leon Trotsky can do a better job on the Democratic Socialists of America than I ever could.  "It has to be galling to a century of Leon Trotsky wannabes that their granny glasses, goatees, and jargon gets them nothing by way of elective office, while adherents of the Democratic Socialists of America hold a few prominent elective offices."

SPONSORED RESEARCH IS RISK-AVERSE AND UNIMAGINATIVE.

An earlier post with that title opened,

I've come close to, but never explicitly said, that the use of the national institutes and national endowments to support academic research is censorship per se.  The closest I have come is to suggest that creativity that might otherwise be unbridled and more enthusiastic gets diverted into chasing whatever it is the institutes, endowments, and charitable foundations are funding.  "Whether the work so funded is better than the work professors develop on their own initiative remains to be seen."  It might be worse than that.  "Even if it's not that bad, the sponsored research imperative diverts thoughtful people from playing with whatever ideas appeal to them (yes, many of them might turn out to be bad or trivial, but that's how emergence works) in order to follow what appears to be a Hot Topic (the tragedy being that by the time those grants and working papers hit the conference and journal circuits, the discipline's stars are on to other things) or to make some money."

Put bluntly, it's money wasted.

The James G. Martin Center's Edward Archer characterizes grantsmanship as fostering "The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research."  In particular, "My experiences at four research universities and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research fellow taught me that the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields."

That second post landed in January, 2020, shortly before the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding involved furrin cleavages.

Alas, for all Our President's efforts at swamp-draining, or swapping out one set of rent-seekers for another, it will still be business as usual, argues J. Scott Turner, in academic science.  "For 75 years, Washington has preached that science needs more government. The White House still believes it."

MORE THAN ONE FORM OF STRATEGIC PATIENCE.

Another weekend, another pattern-bombing of Iran stopped to give negotiators more time, another manifestation of Iranian duplicity.

Right on time... https://t.co/61Y8ENl5lF

— Ken Gardner (@KenGardner11) August 2, 2026

Is it going to be Game On tonight?

Or is Reason's Matthew Petti correct, it's another empty threat?  "We’re locked in a cycle: The president threatens to resume the war, he claims Iran backed down, and then he gets frustrated with Iran again."

HIGH MODERN AUTHORITARIANISM IN THE DOCK.

Yes, in the argot of academic political science, when democratically elected representatives delegate responsibility to government employees, and those employees go astray, that's something gone wrong in the way the democratic republic implements policy, not an authoritarian dictatorship at work.

That delegation might be a necessary evil in a complex world.  Something happens that elected officials conclude requires their oversight, and they'd rather identify the outlines of the challenge and delegate the messy work to an independent regulatory commission; or expand the set of inferior officers as they think proper, then delegate by enacting legislation with "The Secretary shall issue regulations" language; or in a pinch, find some Highly Qualified Functionary and with no irony at all refer to that person as "czar."

That sounds pretty authoritarian, dear reader, particularly when such a functionary issues ukases on insufficient information.  "The problem is that these process-worshippers are comparing an ideal technocratic vision, a Michael Munger unicorn, if you will, with a messy reality that the best epidemiologists are still attempting to quantify and contain."

It looks even more authoritarian when such a functionary issues all manner of ukases, a faction of the elected government brooks no criticism of that functionary, other government employees claim that criticism of the ukases not to mention evidence of the ukases going wrong are misinformation or disinformation or downright dangerous, and so-called journalists choosing not to interview people who offer differing perspectives, and the leading social media companies enforcing The Narrative.  Maybe influential politicians and journalists pile on by referring to skeptics as "science deniers," weaponizing a term that originated to shame people who questioned the existence of Nazi Germany's ethnic cleansing.

Under such circumstances, aren't dissident Militant Normals understandably going to bridle at an unelected bureaucrat behaving in an authoritarian way?

So let it be with Don Antonio.

LET'S PLACE YET ANOTHER PIN.

We will be following some predictions about the upcoming hurricane season.  "Complex adaptive systems, doing what they do. 'There is still enough uncertainty that seeing a weaker outcome would not be a surprise.'"  That same Pacific El Niño that figures in prognostications about North Atlantic hurricanes might affect the White Christmas at Cold Spring Shops headquarters.  "Super El Niño Map Shows States Bracing for 'Significant Snow' This Winter."

We'll see what happens.

Much of the Northeast saw one of the coldest and snowiest winters in more than a decade this past winter while in parts of Texas and the Plains, residents saw record warmth and severe drought.

What would a Super El Niño mean for the United States this time around? According to Columbia University, the Super El Niño leads to milder winters in the northern United States and wetter conditions in the southern parts of the country.

"In December 1997, a very strong El Niño brought wetter-than-normal conditions across most of the southern U.S., while the northern states experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, making it the second warmest and seventh wettest winter since 1895," it revealed.

A map from Newsweek, however, showed that four states are more likely to see "significant snow" this winter. California (in the Sierra Mountain range), New Hampshire, New York and Vermont are all expected to see heavy rain and significant snow, according to the latest predictions.

Meanwhile, Southern states along the Gulf and Atlantic Ocean will see periods of heavy rain and cool fronts.

That's going the long way 'round to say "Complex adaptive systems tend to do what they darn well please." We'll have to wait another month or so for the Old Farmer's Almanac to weigh in.

Can it get much weirder than last "winter?"  "Snow cover through most of Advent, cold with little snow cover through January and into February, now the sort of snow with almost enough moisture to congeal in the snow-thrower, and if it's a little deeper, can bring on cardiac events."

The good Lord willin' and the crick don't rise, we'll be issuing report cards once Thanksgiving arrives.

NO. NEXT QUESTION?

Power Line's John Hinderaker asks, "Can Democrats possibly be that stupid?"  The stupidity in question is a proposed New York mandate that grocery stores knock ten percent off the bill of any shopper who uses the self-service checkout.

Unintended Consequences have never been well understood by nanny state politicians.

If not hoping to legislate away high grocery prices, perhaps Donks use edginess might be a way of attracting attention.  "Satanist weddings, beheading chickens, fake weddings, passing bills that protect child sex predators, hanging out with terrorists, hiring pedophiles—what is going on with the Democratic Party?"

Let the hard rain fall.  Mr Hinderaker suggests, "No one should ever vote for a Democrat."

All they have to do is not be sick freaks, and that's a request too far.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES.

One of the challenges of playing games with algorithms is accurately communicating your capabilities.  A frequent complaint in my irregular Saturday bridge column is the algorithm getting high on its own supply, which can put somebody in an untenable position.

Then there's this position from a few months ago.

I've learned to take the hints the algorithm offers for bid choices seriously, and Two No Trump described more accurately my holdings than Three Diamonds, as did Three No Trump rather than venturing Four Hearts.  Garbage in could lead to garbage out ...

West led the ♠ Five.  No time to get cute here, the defenders cannot get an opportunity to lead Clubs or Spades: Six, Ten, Jack.  Cash the ♦ Ace, then the ♠ Ace.  Now there's a way to run 'em all, which is why human players making bidding plans with partners matters.  Three more Diamond honors clear the defenders of those cards, and a few little Clubs come off the board.

AMTRAK, THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

In the wintertime, in the summertime, ain't we got fun?

Travelers who count on Amtrak long-distance trains to reach far-flung destinations continue to be disappointed by reliability issues this summer, often because of factors not under the passenger operator’s control.

Of late, the issues have been particularly pronounced for the Empire Builder and California Zephyr.

Seven, four hours delay on 24 July account failures of assigned and replacement locomotives; storms on 27 July lead to three hours of delay before reaching Glenview;  unexpected delays stretching to over two hours reaching Brookfield on 28 July.

EMERGENCE, TEMPERED BY BOURGEOIS NORMS.

Somehow, the people kept the Republic, despite the Framers' misgivings.  "Many Founders Died in Despair About the American Experiment."

The image of the dog that catches the truck and wonders what to do next comes to mind.

People rightly marvel at the miracle that Jefferson and his longtime rival-turned-friend John Adams both perished on July 4, 1826. Less remembered is that the two otherwise ideologically and dispositionally opposed torchbearers for the flame of '76 had each soured on the fruits of their precious Revolution.

"Oh my country," Adams wrote in 1806 to Benjamin Rush. "How I mourn over thy follies and Vices, thine ignorance and imbecility, Thy contempt of Wisdom and Virtue and overweening Admiration of fools and Knaves!"

Founder disgruntlement was the rule, not the exception (and the exception to that rule was James Madison). "Those of them who lived on into the early decades of the nineteenth century expressed anxiety over what they had wrought," wrote the historian Gordon Wood in The Radicalism of the American Revolution. "Although they tried to put as good a face as they could on what had happened, they were bewildered, uneasy, and in many cases deeply disillusioned."

Somehow James Madison could remain optimistic despite the British sacking the Federal Capital during his presidency.

CULTIVATING THE FAN BASE.

The custom at Green Bay Packer training camp is for local kids to offer the players the use of a bicycle to ride back to the locker room, and the kid carries the player's helmet.

This photo, from a year ago, shows what happens when a very little girl offers the use of her trainer bike.

Instead of "this bike is way too small," "Here's my helmet, I'll carry your bike."

That's how Packer Nation continues.

The standard remains five titles in six attempts in eight seasons.

IT IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE TO SEE THE OBVIOUS.

Standardized tests, part of upholding standards.

Professors should be able to instruct at a university level without having to cater to those unprepared for college. Any university system, especially one that depends on public funding, would best serve its students and professors by committing to academic rigor, not revisiting the fundamentals.

Regular readers of Cold Spring Shops are long aware that paying for high school twice is a waste, that the professor's job is to say no and uphold standards, and that universities are failing at their mission.

I took my pension in the face of those problems still being business as usual.

Perhaps business as usual is proving untenable.

ONE LAST ACT OF DEFIANCE?

As of yesterday, Our President was still hoping for the best.  "Trump says US and Tehran having 'good talks' as drones hit Iran's neighbours."

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Monday that messages were still being passed between the sides through mediators and Iran had not forsaken diplomacy, but reports that it requested negotiations were "fabricated."

"This is not in our DNA," he said.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday that Iran would halt its own attacks as long as Trump's self-imposed ceasefire continued.

Iran's central military command later on Monday accused the U.S. of threatening vessels and ‌oil tankers in its territorial waters and of "attempting to implement an illegal maritime ⁠blockade", which it said "constitutes an escalation of the conflict in the region."

Saudi Arabia said it shot down drones aimed at petroleum targets, including in Riyadh. It said they had been launched from Iraq by Iran-backed armed groups, and it reserved the right to respond.

That halt lasted about as long as a special price on a three-meter carpet.

Iran has brought days of relative calm in the Middle East to an end after launching what the US called a "surprise" attack in a striking change to the pattern of fighting.

Rather than responding to a fresh American strike, Tehran chose to restart the fight itself, showing a growing willingness to use military force to shape the course of the war on its own terms.

This in turn sets the stage for fresh escalation. "We are going to beat the f**king sh*t out of them," US President Donald Trump told Fox News Wednesday morning. "We'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating."

That threat could hardly have surprised Tehran, which launched its missiles knowing they might bring US bombers back.

Trump had attributed last week's pause to a request from Iran because "they asked us very nicely" and wanted talks. Tehran never publicly committed to the recent pause, although a senior Iranian official said "our armed forces also decided not to take military action."

That makes Iran's decision to resume fire all the more significant.

Hours after publicly signaling that it would match the US restraint, Tehran targeted American forces – apparently deciding that raising the pressure was worth the risk of restarting the nightly bombardment.

"Something appears to have changed fundamentally in Iran's approach, particularly regarding its willingness to initiate a strike if it considers that to be the only viable option," Hamid Reza Azizi, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, wrote on X.

Our President's propensity to posture and threaten a rain of ruin only to order a halt when somebody from Pakistan or Qatar or Oman suggests there are elements in Iran willing to talk might have remnant hardliners feeling their oats.

HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE.

That's the quintessence of existential philosophy, if one excuses the oxymoron, as summarized by Jean-Paul Sartre.  There might be something to it all the same.

Now comes America's Newspaper of Record, perhaps with special knowledge of the ways of the Almighty, calling the roll of the damned.  "In Lieu Of Hell, Unbelieving Introverts Will Be Sent To A Business Networking Event That Lasts Forever."

PEOPLE DIE WHEN GOVERNMENT MESSES UP.

Object to more government action, though, and somebody will carp, "You must want people to die."

Sometimes, no matter what action governments take, people die.  Consider Strong Towns contributor Patricia Tice asking, "What if There Had Been No Interstates?"  Based on a small sample, New Hampshire with its contrarian traditions and understanding the ways federal matching funds ensnare politicians, things look pretty good.

The first 16-mile segment got built quickly, but that was a coastline connector that reinforced existing transportation patterns. As they started pushing in toward the center of the state, progress slowed dramatically. By the time they got past Manchester and headed toward Concord, sections got built as local concerns were addressed, but it was slow-walked. The Franconia Notch project dragged out well into the 1980s. Ultimately, they stretched the implementation across nearly 50 years for a bare-bones system.

Well, this is North of Boston, where "You can't get there from here" is a tradition.

HISTORIAN, CRAFTSMAN, ARTIST, EVENT COORDINATOR.

In case you want to describe your model railroading in the style of a Linked In profile!

Building a model railroad can be a multi-year effort with many interdependencies. It requires clear goals, careful allocation of resources, planning, tracking progress, and adjusting as needed. For those working in clubs or building a home layout with friends, managing people is part of the job as well. Even those working alone may need to outsource parts of the project. In my case, that meant hiring contractors for room preparation and working with family and friends to build the benchwork and backdrop. A key part of project management is sustaining progress in a way that keeps everyone — including yourself — motivated.

There are many ways we can frame the pursuit of our hobby to help our friends better understand it. Before this discussion, had you stopped to consider all the skills you’ve built up over the years? Each takes time and energy to develop, but along the way you gain new knowledge, new abilities, and maybe even a few new friendships. Perhaps our non-model-railroad friends are right, and at times we really are just “playing with trains” — and that’s perfectly fine. But we know our hobby also gives us the opportunity to become historians, craftspersons, [c.q.] artists, authors, photographers, event coordinators, project managers, and so much more.

The play value in "playing with trains" is greater in any event to the extent that what becomes available for layout tours or operating sessions is a believable representation of something real, that runs reliably.

THE CONTINUED CASE FOR STRATEGIC PATIENCE.

After thirteen days of air strikes on and from Iran, both major combatants have paused, again, perhaps to talk.  "Airstrikes have paused and talks are pressing forward. But can the US and Iran take the off-ramp?"

BOREDOM IS SOPHISTICATION.

That's true of soporific public radio.

That's true of a concert of tenure music.

That's true of serious film (pronounced fillllllm).

That's true of juried art exhibitions.

Why should footie be any different?

It's “the beautiful game,” and for most of my adult life I’ve been patiently informed, usually by someone who calls it fútbol, that I simply lack the sophistication to appreciate it. But they’re wrong. Soccer isn’t beautiful. It’s boring, and it has nothing to do with sophistication.

The author documents a number of things, including outcomes often indistinguishable from a coin flip.

After a dozen footie-relevant posts in the past two months, it's time to put the dodecahedron back in the locker for a while.  That is, once stoppage time is done.

Sorry, I couldn't resist that parting shot!

Find yourself a circus and go to it.