Students at the University of Central Oklahoma want to hold a "Straight Pride Week."

"The general gist is that if you are a straight student on campus be proud, be loud, this is your time to shine," said college Republican Kyle Houts.

The group has posted fliers on campus that read, "we're here, we're conservative,
we're out."

Members of the Gay Alliance for Tolerance and Equality say they consider the College Republican's celebration an attack on gay and lesbian students.

"What is there to say about it, 'I'm proud, and I'm straight and I guess white,' I don't know?" said GATE member Jennifer Rodriguez. "I think they definitely are being discriminatory because there's probably a lot of gay Republicans out there."

Italics added. (H/T: Political Correctness Watch.)

I read the student paper too, and this letter really hacked me off.

In the article "Professor predicts a 'bumpy ride,'" Chad Eldred tries to predict what the next four years might be like. On one hand, Eldred quotes Professor Greaves who says things may go one way or another depending on how various events play out. On the issue of social security "reform," Eldred chose to speak with Professor Gleisner.

Gleisner clearly stands extremely to the right on this issue, as his remarks about taxation, social security and the deficit indicate. Perhaps Eldred needs to learn a thing or two about balanced coverage. It is extremely irresponsible of the Chronicle to print such a one-sided view of what might be the most important decision to be made in the next four years.

Sarnath Ramnath
Professor
Computer Science

Prof. Gleisner works in my department and I consider him a friend as well as a colleague. I don't think of him as an extreme right-winger particularly on fiscal issues, but I did not see his comments in the article online so I had to track them down. Here's what Prof. Ramnath thinks is "extremely to the right" on Social Security.

Another agenda item is the reformation of the Social Security system. President Bush is proposing to privatize the system and Richard Gleisner, an economice professor at SCSU, said that he believes privatizing Social Security is the best option. Gleisner also said that no matter what, the system needs to change.

"Americans are very suspicious of the privatizing of Social Security, but something has to be done with our current program," Gleisner said. "Tax revenues, in the not too distant future, will be insufficient to cover benefits and that will only intensify as the baby boomers retire."

The current deficit has also been a hot topic through the country and Gleisner said that there is really no consensus about how the deficit will affect the economy.

"There is disagreement among economists about what the deficit does to the economy," Gleisner said. "Hoever, there is no evidence that the large deficit is slowing the economy right now, and interest rates are very low despite the deficit." (From the 1/27/05 edition, p. 6, not available online.)

Now I might quibble around the edges of what Dick has been quoted here. And Dick will certainly say that the writer left out many of the caveats in his answers to these questions. (Answering questions about economics to reporters is a bit of an art; few reporters get your analytical points and numbers make their eyes glaze over.) But to characterize those views as extreme right-wing is patently absurd and part of the intolerance with which our Bolshevik faculty treat anything that disagrees with their worldview.

Dick also said,

By 2030, there will be twice as many elderly as there are today, with only two people working for every person drawing Social Security. After 2032, contributions from payroll taxes will only cover 75 cents on the dollar of current benefits. So we must act, and act now, to save Social Security.

Oh wait, sorry. That wasn't Dick. That was Bill Clinton.

Still in my P.J.'s, this morning I checked out SCSU's student newspaper on line. Featured was an article entitled "Free speech under debate," written by an aspiring young MSM wanna-be.

In the article the student reporter reviewed the thoughts delivered in a public forum by a representative of St. Cloud State University President Roy Saigo, and concluded with these unquestioned thoughts:

“When asked what she thought was the greatest threat to free speech on campus and in general, Zemek de Dominguez expressed her sentiments. 'Speaking for myself, and not for the University,’ Zemek de Dominguez said, ‘I believe it's the current political situation and our president.’ ”

Sheesh, where should we begin? Let's assume for starters that F. Anne Zemek de Dominguez was referring here to President Bush, rather than to President Saigo.

Regardless, to insure free speech here on our campus, is it not incumbent on all of us, especially on future members of the “fourth estate,” to question the assertions made by all, regardless of whether or not we may agree with their political persuasions? For example, would not the reporter have done a more credible reporting job by including in this article answers to the following two most obvious questions that should have been posed to F. Anne Zemek de Dominguez?

“Why do you hold such a belief?”

“Can you cite for our readers specific policies endorsed by President Bush that threaten free speech on campus?”

Gulp, let's hope that CBS News is not recruiting for Dan Rather's replacement here at SCSU.

So what are we supposed to make of both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett betting against the U.S. dollar? I'm with HedgeFundGuy:

Gates and Buffet need to know that 1) the dollar is already undervalued on a purchasing power parity basis vis-a-vis Europe and close with the Yen (see the latest Big Mac Index) and 2) only revisions to current deficit projections will hurt the dollar. Instead, they look at the current deficits (in the upturn of a business cycle), and see disequilibrium that can only be fixed by a falling dollar, neglecting the existing knowledge and foresight of the FX speculators.

The word is 'hubris'. Hopefully these two didn't bet the farm.

I moved the discussion of the al-Qloushi interview to the NARN site, as it pertains to the interview we did with him on Saturday. I would prefer further discussion to go there for the benefit of our audience, thank you.

Christiane Amanpour did a piece on 60 Minutes last night on Viktor Yushchenko's election and poisoning in Ukraine. It was nice to see both Viktor and Kathy on screen, and he looked like he was much more relaxed than the earlier videos I'd seen of him during the days on the Maidan. An emailed transcript from the Action Ukraine Report indicates that Yushchenko still thinks it possible the Russians did it.

The attempt to eliminate Yushchenko is as Byzantine as Kiev’s skyline, filled with plots and potential villains. One theory is that he was poisoned by Ukraine’s security services, the old KGB, because just before he fell so gravely ill, he had been invited to dinner by the security chiefs. Yushchenko and his hosts shared crayfish, salad and a few beers, and ironically they had been meeting to discuss the death threats against him.

Ukraine’s security services deny they had anything to do with the poisoning. Their director had in fact been helping the Yushchenko camp.

Does Yushchenko know who did this to him? "I have no doubts this was by my opponents in the government, that's who would benefit the most from my death," says Yushchenko.

But there is still the question of how it was done. One way to solve it is to trace the poison. And some people in Yushchenko's camp think that it came from a Russian chemical weapons lab.

"Dioxin like this is produced in four or five military labs in Russia, America, and a few other countries," says Yushchenko. "Our security services have informed me how this material got into Ukraine, but that evidence is now with our general prosecutor, who eventually must answer this question."

They must also examine another plot on Yushchenko’s life. Ukraine’s security services say a powerful car bomb, targeting Yushchenko’s headquarters, was discovered during the presidential campaign. Two Russian nationals are being interrogated.

Spokesmen for the Russian security services would not comment on either case, but President Vladimir Putin’s role during the election remains controversial. He openly backed the handpicked successor of the previous regime, coming to Kiev twice to lend his support.

"President Putin supported your opponent during the election. How do you reconcile with him," asks Amanpour.

"I'll give him my hand, and I say, 'Vladimir Vladimirovich, let’s forget the past and think of the future,'" says Yushchenko.

This week he did just that, greeting Putin on his first trip abroad after his inauguration.

"Everyone now understands only Ukrainians have the right to choose Ukraine’s president," says Yushchenko. "Our president is not elected in Moscow, or anywhere else."

Those of us who've known him for awhile know that Viktor speaks with great rhetorical flourish. Because I do not speak Ukrainian (and just a little Russian) I often miss these flourishes, but the translator didn't with the end of the piece.

"A lot of people asked me, 'How did you deal with it,' and my answer was always my husband’s alive. My children are alive, I'm alive," says Yushchenko's wife, Katherine. "It was such a small episode in a huge revolution. Generations of Ukrainians, you could say centuries of Ukrainians, have dreamed and have fought, and have died for a chance to be right where we are right now."

"When I heard that millions were praying for me, it went straight to my heart," says
Yushchenko. "But I also felt an obligation to live. To die is not very original, but to live and carry on -- that’s special."

OK then. Carpe diem.

UPDATE: This article from Transitions Online sounds as if Yushchenko hasn't exactly buried the shaska just yet.

Boris Berezovsky, a self-exiled Russian tycoon and would-be nemesis of Vladimir Putin, announced on 28 January that he plans to settle in Ukraine within a matter of months. Speaking to the Russian news website gazeta.ru, he said he was confident the new Ukrainian leadership would not extradite him to Russia, where he is wanted on charges of fraud.

Wanna bet Berezovsky has a little information to share with Yushchenko? Boris better be careful where he eats.

And yes, I'm hearing that stupid song in my head, after I saw that the news of the St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report's new relationship with the St. Cloud Times had made the paper's editorial page yesterday. We will be front and center of a new publication called "ROI Central Minnesota".

Several pages of the ROI — Return on Investment — will be familiar to many local managers: The St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report, researched and written by St. Cloud State University economics professors King Banaian and Richard MacDonald. We'll handle production of the report and deliver it in a timely manner.

The material will continue to be the quality index and economic forecast produced quarterly by SCSU St. Cloud State in conjunction with the St. Cloud Area Economic Development Partnership.

Since 1996, the QBR has been the only comprehensive report providing insight into Central Minnesota's economic future. It's shaped by your voice in the form of local survey results.

There was also a 3/4 page ad in the front section of the paper for it. So consider this full disclosure: I write something that the Times prints and sells. We have been told, however, that we alone will decide the content of what goes in the QBR portion of ROI.

And yes, Francophones, we get the joke on my name.

This has been in the works for a few months but we only got the commitment to it earlier this month. I'm pleased because moving the production side of QBR to the Times frees Rich and I to do more things with it. We should have a new one out in early April.

MOBsters are kinda cranky about Bill Moyers' screed in the STrib yesterday, and Nihilist in Golf Pants is calling a fiskwa. From an unexpected source, Liz at Blonde Moment has posted that perhaps Mr. Moyers has lifted whole sentences from another source without appropriate attribution. Not exactly a fisking, but it's a start.

Liz and her husband are spending more time together right now, but she should come out and blog more.

You will note that I've moved some stuff around on the right column. The archives move up, and a separate hard-code of the Minnesota Organization of Blogs (list stolen from Fraters) comes next. I think I cleaned out all the dupes in the Blogrolling list. I'd be delighted to set up a MOB alliance blogroll that could easily transfer to everyone's blog as they see fit, if only I knew how to do that.

If you've missed the MOB list and should be on, please let me know and I'll change the list. If there's a test for whether you get on the list, I have no idea. Certainly attendance of at least one MOB function is prima facie evidence of membership. A Thursday night Keegan's trivia sheet will do just fine as well. Thanks to all of you for making MOB events so much fun.

To bed I go, praying for Ed's First Mate to get her pancreas transplant. Please join me.

I thank God for listening to our prayers. I ask God that His will be done and to look kindly over the Morrisseys, that their prayers are answered as they await a transplant. I pray that if it is Your will, that the donor's pancreas is a match, and I pray for the donor's family in their time of grief, Amen.

UPDATE: His will was to have them wait for another donor.

Before bed, let me post this quote from Adam Smith:

The greater part of universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection after they had been hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and best endowed universities have been the slowest in adopting those improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the established plan of education.
(The Wealth of Nations, V.1.162)

This quote was part of a statement by Dartmouth economist Meir Kohn in introducing Daniel Pipes, calling it a great day for intellectual diversity.

Sadly, little has changed. In our generation, the "exploded system" is marxism. And our universities are indeed its last sanctuary. Neo-marxist notions set the parameters of "political correctness" on campus-- the evils of capitalism and colonialism and the sins of America and Israel.

Yes.

H/T: Instapundit.

I agree with Craig Newmark: This story just gets weirder by the moment. We reported twice on Prof. Steven Roberds last month, when his denial of tenure at Southern Utah University sparked a student protest. David Tufte has uncovered that it's deja vu all over again.

The student protest website says it all: OnlyInUtah.org. Only in Utah - that reddest of red states - can a popular liberal professor be fired. And only in Utah - a state viewed as a theocracy by much of the country - can "they" get away with this.

But here's the scoop. This has happened before - different university, different year, same professor, and a similar pattern of protest by students.

Yes, you read that correctly. Seven years ago, Stephen Roberds was let go by the University of North Alabama in the midst of his tenure process, and student protests broke out to support him without visible support from other faculty.

Tufte uses the campus paper at UNA to show the similarities, which are remarkable. I think Tufte has been very careful and exhaustive with the documentation, and while he doesn't draw a strong conclusion he does say

I'm going to make the claim that this list of similarities is long enough that it did not occur by chance. Read what you like into that.

I said when the story broke that we didn't have the whole story. Tufte has gotten us closer.

Tomorrow on NARN we get a chance to visit with Ahmad al-Qloushi, who was a student at Foothill College in San Jose, CA, who wrote an essay the result of which was his professor telling him to seek psychiatric consulting. Here's the essay he wrote. The story has been carried by FrontPage and just yesterday at ChronWatch. You'll note that the FrontPage story has been written by a liberal student at Foothill; I covered that letter here when it was written. Ahmad will be on at 1pm CT.

At 1:30 we will have a discussion of the recent proposals for a smoking ban, the Freedom to Breathe Act in Minnesota, with Ryan Pacyga, an opponent. Craig Westover has been a one-stop shop for coverage of the Minnesota Legislature on this. Just scroll away.

Click here to get a link for the streaming show if your radio is too far for our hamsters.

The headlines say it all:

American economic growth slows
2004's economy was the best in five years

I saw this glass half-full/half-empty thing this morning having two TVs at the bagel shop, one on Fox and other on CNN. You can guess which played which.

Here are two graphs that tell us useful things. First, the main story of that people will cover is the impact of the trade deficit. They will report to you that the deficit shaved 1.7% from GDP growth, which might make you think that we could have had 4.8% growth rather than the 3.1% we did. But the trade deficit has been growing for quite some time.

Now some people will want to point to this as a sign of trouble resulting from the budget deficit (the old "twin deficits" story) but this isn't so. The deterioration in the trade deficit began in 1998, while the budget deficit only became a problem after 9/11.

The second story worth understanding is that unlike the previous recession of 1991, this past recession has been characterized by a large downswing in investment in 2000-02 and a commensurate recovery in 2003-04.

Source (for WSJ subscribers only.) What this means really is that there has been a large sucking sound from businesses who are seeking to increase investment. Your basic principles student is taught that this should lead to an increase in interest rates, but that hasn't happened because of large capital inflows. Foreign investors, continuing to see opportunities here in America, are seeking dollars to invest here. The natural way to acquire them is to sell us imports: Thus do we have a large trade deficit.

This is an important point: We all know that the current account deficit -- a broader measure that includes the trade deficit, remittances from the U.S. abroad for things from servicing debt to sending Tia Maria a few dollars down in Guatemala -- has to be paid for by a capital account surplus. But one doesn't necessarily cause the other and not vice versa. It is entirely possible that a desire to send capital to the U.S. leads to an increase in our trade deficit. So while some are going to argue that the trade deficit represents something horrible, that we are living beyond our means, it could instead mean that the demand for U.S. assets (relative to foreign ones) has increased.

This isn't the view of everyone. For example, Stefan Karlsson argues the trade deficit is a "drag". Though he makes the interesting point that income accelerated somewhat due to the one-off dividend payment Microsoft made late last year, if the income wasn't spent on goods in the last four weeks of the quarter it had no effect. (Looking at the numbers from a couple of weeks ago, that appears to be right.) But largely the results have been ignored by the blogs and the media coverage has been various, as the headlines showed. Underneath, there may be great news. I see nothing in this report that causes me to revise my original 2005 forecast.

(BTTT 1/28)

I have never gone to the Patriot Forum because of the distance and timing, but a chance to see Hugh Hewitt and Peter Beinart debate is too good to pass up.

Thursday, Feb. 10, 7pm at the Hilton Minneapolis Downtown. You know, the place we had the debate gathering last October. Great digs. Got your tix? Get 'em.

My first question will be, What kind of razor do you use, Peter?

Between class and a job search meeting I've been busy all afternoon. Back later with stories on the GDP report and a couple of incredible tales of academia. Thanks to everyone for great comments yesterday and today!

Chumley wonder(bar)s:

Something that struck me as an interesting idea while I was having lunch today (Slim Fast and a salad, yeah!!!) was the following. If you take items off when ordering a food, why don't you get a discount? For instance, I got a salad today at Arby's, but I didn't want chicken or cheese. Since these would strike me as being two of the most expensive ingredients on the salad, shouldn't they offer me even a small discount?

The answer is "no". One possible reason is that the salad was already made with chicken and cheese, mass-produced at lower cost. The act of picking off the chicken and cheese is then an added cost. (Why then don't they charge for removal? -- ed.)

I think a second possible explanation is that bundling lettuce, tomato, chicken and cheese allows the owner to create more net revenues.

This is a variant on the question: Why can't you order your cable or satellite TV channels a la carte? Why do you buy them in bundles many of which you don't want? I buy a premium package for BBC America, Bloomburg and MSNBC. There are eight other channels in that package I do not want even at a zero price. Why do I buy the package? Because the value of the three I want is greater than the cost of the eleven I buy. Likewise, the value of the salad is greater than $5 to me, so inducing me to pay for the chicken and cheese when I don't want them transfers additional profits to Arby's that would not be gained if they allowed me to build a salad with a la carte pricing.

This is more likely with products which for which consumers are not responsive to price changes very much (relatively inelastic demand, an economist would say), and for which competitors can be found only at some cost. Chumley did not bang the counter and say "What? Pay for chicken you removed for me? Off to a Wendy's!" It wasn't worth the effort to him.

Other explanations? Comments!

One of my students reads here and sends me a note asking about a speech by Jacques Chirac at Davos seeking an international tax on, say, airline tickets to support efforts to halt AIDS in Africa (and elsewhere, I suppose.) The Economist pooh-poohs the idea; neither is the Guardian much enthused; Le Sabot Post Moderne says

Run. Flee. Never look back.

I imagine Dracula told Lucy it would be a one-time nibble, too. Is anyone unspeakably foolish enough to believe that once the bureaucrats of the world discover a new revenue source they'll stop with just this one "noble cause?"

My student said that Bill Gates, Bono, and George Soros were in the audience. Looks like there are some candidates...

Chirac, it's reported, put this speech together rather hastily after Tony Blair waxed on about his plans for bringing peace in our time. Chirac is borrowing the idea of the Tobin tax, an idea embraced by the late Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone. But the incidence of this tax would be quite regressive, charging $3 on each plane ticket everywhere. Many in the developing world find their local airlines transport them for relatively small sums as long as they have domestic-issued passports. And the idea was raised by the UN in 1995 and nobody has jumped on the bandwagon. They won't now either.

A few of us, including some of my frequent commenters here at Scholars, have posited to the University that we should be able to drop students from classes when they don't show up in the first week. This would have really been helpful this year, where the scheduling gurus decided to start on a Thursday. Most students simply stayed out through the weekend and wandered up earlier this week.

The same debate is going on at Northern Kentucky University, where Prof. Jonathan T. Reynolds teaches and writes about the debate on Cliopatria. One student there is not amused.

I work 40 hours weekly, on top of being a full-time student, to be able to pay to come here, and even then I can just barely afford it.

To me, it's my choice whether I want to come to class or not. No member of the faculty on this campus, at least in my mind, has the right to tell me when I have to be here.

I can close my eyes and imagine that to be my son. If it was, I'd like him to have Prof. Reynolds as an instructor. He replies:

Education is an unusual commodity. It is the only investment where the customer wants as little in return for their money as possible. As such, there is something of a conspiracy between lazy students and lazy faculty. Students are all too happy when a class is cancelled: "Woohoo! I'm getting less education for my tuition dollar!"

The explanation for such economically irrational behavior comes from the fact that things are expected of students when they come to class.

It is demanding and frequently stressful work. But here too lies the logic behind expectations of attendance. Hiring a teacher isn't just hiring somebody to help you learn, it is also a process of hiring someone to make you learn. Think of us as very demanding personal "brain trainers." We are here to get your flabby cerebral cortex off the couch and whip it into a lean, mean, critical-thinking machine.

He's right: try searching for the phrase "customer shirking" in Google and you get no hits. Are there other examples? Please provide them in the comments. Perhaps that can give us ideas how to teach better.

UPDATE: Cold Spring Shops lays additional tracks. I took this question to my breakfast group this morning, and we realized that there are many examples of customer shirking: the doctor who tells me to lose weight; the financial planner who tells me to save more and spend less; the personal trainer ("if you can dodge a wrench...").

The Chronicle of Higher Education leads today with a story of two researchers wondering why their study of Iraqi civilian casualties, which they rushed to print the week before the U.S. presidential elections, didn't get more attention. (The Chronicle wants you to read this so much that it's not subscriber protected like most of their stuff.)

Les F. Roberts, a research associate at Hopkins and the lead author of the paper, was shocked by the muted or dismissive reception. He had expected the public response to his paper to be "moral outrage."

On its merits, the study should have received more prominent play. Public-health professionals have uniformly praised the paper for its correct methods and notable results.

Note the part I italicized -- this is not an opinion piece but supposed to be straight news. The writer of this article seems to share Prof. Roberts' pique. And it's clear that the authors wanted to get the results out to influence U.S. opinion, but they wonder why people are skeptical.

"On the 25th of September my focus was about how to get out of the country," he recalls. "My second focus was to get this information out before the U.S. election." In little more than 30 days, the paper was published in The Lancet.

Mr. Roberts and his colleagues now believe that the speedy publication of that data created much of the public skepticism toward the study. He sent the manuscript to the medical journal on October 1, requesting that it be published that month. Mr. Roberts says the editors agreed to do so without asking him why.

Despite the sprint to publication, the paper did go through editing and peer review. In an accompanying editorial, Richard Horton, editor of the The Lancet, wrote that the paper "has been extensively peer-reviewed, revised, edited, and fast-tracked to publication because of its importance to the evolving security situation in Iraq."

While it was edited and peer-reviewed as a public health analysis, its understanding of the nature of sampling for war deaths may have been suspect, as the Economist pointed out in November.

Nan Laird, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, who was not involved with the study, says that she believes both the analysis and the data-gathering techniques used by Dr Roberts to be sound. She points out the possibility of “recall bias”—people may have reported more deaths more recently because they did not recall earlier ones. However, because most people do not forget about the death of a family member, she thinks that this effect, if present, would be small. Arthur Dempster, also a professor of statistics at Harvard, though in a different department from Dr Laird, agrees that the methodology in both design and analysis is at the standard professional level. However, he raises the concern that because violence can be very localised, a sample of 33 clusters really might be too small to be representative.

This concern is highlighted by the case of one cluster which, as the luck of the draw had it, ended up being in the war-torn city of Fallujah. This cluster had many more deaths, and many more violent deaths, than any of the others. For this reason, the researchers omitted it from their analysis—the estimate of 98,000 was made without including the Fallujah data. If it had been included, that estimate would have been significantly higher.

The Fallujah data-point highlights how the variable distribution of deaths in a war can make it difficult to make estimates.

And the other problem is that we are counting both deaths among the insurgents and civilian/non-combatant casualties.

Of the increase in deaths (omitting Fallujah) reported by the study, roughly 60% is due directly to violence, while the rest is due to a slight increase in accidents, disease and infant mortality. However, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt because the more detailed the data—on causes of death, for instance, rather than death as a whole—the less statistical significance can be ascribed to them.

So the discrepancy between the Lancet estimate and the aggregated press reports is not as large as it seems at first. The Lancet figure implies that 60,000 people have been killed by violence, including insurgents, while the aggregated press reports give a figure of 15,000, counting only civilians.

So it could be that 45,000 insurgents were killed, which would not be necessarily bad news. And while any deaths are a bad thing, it's worth remembering the increase in mortality in postwar Germany or Japan.

There were reasons for skepticism of the Roberts et al. study, therefore, and its appearance on page A16 in the Washington Post, for example, probably was a fair reading. Why is the Chronicle whining about its lack of placement on A1? Given the tone of the article, one can only conclude that its editors too are upset with the outcome of the 2004 elections.

I like Brad DeLong's professional work, but it seems difficult sometimes to find nice things to link to on his blog since we're kind of on different sides of the political spectrum. Tyler Cowen points out that DeLong said something nice about Gordon Tullock.

He is a genius, a madman, and always fascinating. It seemed to me at the time a great pity (and it seems to me now a great pity) that James Buchanan's "Public Choice" Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded to Buchanan alone, and not to James Buchanan + Gordon Tullock + Mancur Olson.

Flashback: when I was still in graduate school I went to the 1983 American Economics Association meetings in NYC to look for my first teaching post. My advisor, Tom Willett, was there as well and we'd agreed to go to dinner at a nearby diner late that night. In the lobby of the hotel Tom says we'll be joined by one more person. It was Tullock. I had interviewed with seven schools that day and was pretty tired, but the energy that came from that evening was infectious. When you're a new PhD you are always asked about your dissertation and you have a stock answer; Gordon got me off that answer within 45 seconds and into areas of the research I hadn't even explored yet. I remember as we walked back to the hotel Tullock turned to me and said "You're from New England. What do you know about volunteer fire departments?" "One of my best friends in high school is in one in Connecticut." That became a ten-minute discussion about voluntary provision of public goods (i.e., what explains volunteer fire departments? Who joins? How do they work?) "I'm collecting these stories," he concluded. It was a look inside the mind of a genius. It was one of those moments where you realize you are exactly where you want to be doing exactly what you want to do.

I've run into him at conferences since, even though as a monetary/macro policy researcher you'd think I have nothing in common with him. He worked in China during the Communist uprising and has a fascination for the stories of inflation at the time, and he continues to think about that issue. As you can tell from his festschrift, these stories abound.

Cowen notes that the Liberty Fund is releasing more of Tullock's writings as part of a ten-volume set. Those are going on my bookshelf soon. I will see if I can get us a radio interview with Gordon some day. DeLong's right: he's a genius and fascinating, and just a little mad.

How the mighty hath fallen! Doug Mientkiewicz, the darling of Twins fans (particularly females it seemed) and member of the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox -- you know, that never gets old! -- has been traded to the New York Mets for a single minor league player. The minor leaguer is a prospect, but had his season cut short last year with a busted wrist.

The subplot revolves around Mientkiewicz's decision to retain ownership of the baseball with which he recorded the last out of the World Series. The Red Sox have asked for it to be given to them for historical purposes, since they've been waiting 86 years for it. Mientkiewicz has merely loaned it them for the year. It's unlikely he can keep the ball at any rate, and now he gets to play for Omar Minaya, the Mets general manager, whose spending this off season has given a new target for sailors on shore leave. Maybe they can give him Mo Vaughn's locker.

Bartolo Colon could not be reached for comment.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I wonder if we could do this? Could we trade our own Roy Saigo for a community college president and $2 million?

I recall my parents sending me to summer school during my pre-teen years once to learn typing. I thought it was useful but with a high opportunity cost: I wanted to play golf instead. (The local muni course had junior memberships for the princely sum of $40 back in 1969.)

Chad the Elder writes about a marvelous essay in National Review Online called "Typing Alone".

People often ask why Minnesota seems to be such a hotbed of blogging. In addition to the Northern Alliance of Bloggers, there a number of other high-quality blogs based in the North Star State. Various theories have been offered to explain the phenomena.

Our own Saint Paul believes that it's due in large part to the mediocre writing talent (with a few notable exceptions) and overt political biases of the local media, in particular the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Others have claimed that it's because of the less-than-stellar weather, a theory similar to one often used to explain the number of successful rock bands that emerged from the Pacific Northwest during the heyday of grunge. The reasoning was that it was too crappy to do anything outside, so people were driven indoors where they honed their musical acumen.

That's an opportunity cost argument. If I could be back on the links with a $40 golf membership, there might be no Scholars. So too is Mark Oppenheimer's explanation for students who used to type novels out to learn touchtyping but don't anymore.

Fry's memory of teaching himself to type by working through Wodehouse is emblematic of one kind of college life lived, the one that Camille Paglia describes as her education alone in the stacks of Yale University's Sterling Library, the education that Philip Larkin got with his fellow poets in small literary clubs at Oxford University. It's an education made possible by free time, gotten by those students who go to class but otherwise do not clutter their lives with extracurricular activities. By contrast, what Grafton describes, the independent study or senior essay, is in some ways a small sampling of that education, one term or one year spent trying out the life of the mind, giving it a test run, perhaps to figure out if one is suited to graduate school, which offers the concentrated academic experience that busy undergraduates almost never have anymore.

On many campuses, including mine, students are engaged in many tasks. We can try to tell them they cannot be both full-time students and full-time employees at some retail box, but when the return to a college education is this high, people cut other time to make it work. At the same time, technology has made the value of leisure greater: I now use a device that allows me to record and timeshift not only television but internet radio; my news reading is aggregated to save time; my car's stereo not only has six CDs at one time but the ability to skip songs and program just what I want. All of which is to say: the monastic life is more expensive than it used to be.

Thus does the space for single-minded purposefulness — for typing over a Wodehouse novel, or reading the Wodehouse corpus, following a single interest until it is exhausted, and sacrificing other opportunities along the way — thus does that space shrink ever more. Born physicists are forced to master a bit of German, poets are required to study calculus — one never hears this ideal of well-roundedness questioned. It is gospel that we all must be minimally conversant with a dozen subjects, even as fewer and fewer students are deeply knowledgeable in, say, American history or Latin. We lament the decline of knowledge, but well-roundedness, often in the guise of the "liberal" education, is one culprit.

But at the same time, we can drill down to the parts that interest us more easily than before. Perhaps one of the reasons for well-roundedness in the past was that an hour spent studying calculus was more valuable to a poet when she could not scan the web for the verses of 15th century Persian writers, translated into English, with commentary. Again, it's a question of opportunity costs. If the technology of learning has improved, the returns to well-roundedness may have decreased.

I believe in a college life that, if it does not permit time to type out a Wodehouse novel, at least allows time to turn in the homework that Robert Stone deserves. I can make some suggestions toward that end: drastically curtail grade inflation, as students in danger of getting a C will drop their extraneous activities; give special scholarships to students excellent in one activity; increase funding for students' summer research; decrease funding for athletics and other student activities, and put the money into financial aid so that poor students don't need as much part-time work. None of these suggestions will go very far, however. Maybe we need better, braver teachers, who publish less, teach more, and are unafraid to offend — role models.

Ending grade inflation might change that, though they might just drop the classes or drop out. And financial aid changes one's income without changing opportunity costs, particularly for the Yalies and Princetonians.

And "better, braver teachers"? Role models? That would be nice, but around them they have students in ROTC, students who are already entrepreneurs, students who are raising families and going to school nights. Those are role models for most students. If they need role models to live the monastic academic life, they should go to monasteries.

Professor Plum finds a case for school choice, or at least the choice to get the hell out of Newton, Massachusetts. He annotates this essay, in which we learn that the grade 1-8 benchmarks for math education in the Newton Public School System do not contain any mention of the four basic operations of mathematics but instead

Respect for Human Differences - students will live out the system wide core of 'Respect for Human Differences' by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors." It continues, "Students will: Consistently analyze their experiences and the curriculum for bias and discrimination; Take effective anti-bias action when bias or discrimination is identified; Work with people of different backgrounds and tell how the experience affected them; Demonstrate how their membership in different groups has advantages and disadvantages that affect how they see the world and the way they are perceived by others...

Scores on Massachusetts' standardized tests there have fallen.

On your reading list today should be Claudia Rosett connecting Bush's doctrine of spreading freedom and democracy to fighting poverty.

Yet to whatever extent Mr. Bush's agenda plays out in practice, one of the main results would be a richer world for all--with the most dramatic benefits reaching those who are now among the poorest. One of the truths wrested at great cost from the grand social experiments of the 20th century was that the prerequisite for prosperity--if we are speaking of wealth for the many, not just for a ruling few--is freedom. It is not only by smothering free speech or jailing loyal opposition that dictators keep control. It is also by decreeing--in ways that suit the pleasures of the ruler, not the ruled--the rules and conditions under which people may seek work, earn money, own property and buy what they need to feed their families and otherwise pursue happiness. With every reasonable choice that gets cut off by dictatorial rule, with every payoff that must be made to authorities who exist for no other purpose than to please themselves and collect tolls, more human energy and talent and knowledge goes to waste.

To whatever extent Mr. Bush's vision of ending tyranny is realized, it will do more to end poverty than any amount of aid, including the $195 billion the United Nations now proposes to pour into development over the next decade, following the advice of a 3,000-word study put together by 265 experts (which works out to about 11 words, or $730 million in recommended spending, per expert). Donations, state plans and even the best-intentioned aid schemes cannot make up for the ability of individuals, in free societies, to choose most profitably how to wield their own knowledge and energy to support themselves.

That plan I believe is the plan offered by Jeff Sachs, described in this week's Economist, in which the plan is put at 3,000 pages rather than words. It's certainly more than 3000 words. But the Economist makes a good point about the overreach of the article and the conflict between Sachs' and Rosett's visions.

The report challenges this thinking in two ways. First, it insists that some of the world's poorest countries are in fact pretty well-governed: they are poor for other reasons, to do with geography, history, incidence of disease, and so forth. Identify the good governments, the thinking goes, and give them aid “at scale”.

...The report has a second way of dealing with lack of good governance: it argues that aid can be spent on remedying this. But that may be wishful thinking. The problem with aid to bad governments is that it can help to keep them in place. Donors have tried before to invest in improved governance. The record is not good.

The report has recommendations by the dozen on how aid should be patterned and delivered. It argues that the development needs of countries vary a great deal from case to case: strategies need to be carefully tailored, with policies designed and “owned” by the country itself. Well and good. But many would question the very idea of a top-down development strategy.

The difficulty for many aid donors is that the process of democratizing a country removes the "top" from which development dollars flow "down". If they try to invest in a winning candidate they can be seen as trying to control the election of the recipient country. If they invest across the board much of the money is dissipated in electoral campaigns, perhaps in vote-buying.

It would be hasty to toss aside all of Sachs' report. In a separate report, the Economist shows that there are some good ideas like reducing school fees and giving out mosquito nets with insecticides that do not rely on good governance. But Rosett's point is that the rules of how people earn a living is primary to Sachs' suggestions. She's right.

UPDATE: cf. the Diplomad. I confess to not reading the whole 3,000 pages. But there's a 90 page overview at least.

It's fairly well known that the purpose of a betting line is to get an even amount of money bet on each team (the line being an inducement to put more money on the team perceived more likely to lose.) According to this article about the line for the Super Bowl, that comes from five guys sitting around a table.

The LVSC has five oddsmakers devoted strictly to developing odds for NFL games. Before Sunday's championship games even began, the group already had created lines for each of the four potential Super Bowl matchups.

As it became clear Sunday that New England and Philadelphia would meet Feb. 6 in Jacksonville, each of the oddsmakers independently came up with his final line based on statistical analysis, historical significance and, yes, gut feeling.

Dan O'Brien, one of the five deciding oddsmakers, picked New England to win by 6. White, the boss of the crew, chose the Patriots to win by 3. Another picked New England by 6, another chose 6½ and the final oddsmaker was torn between 5½ and 6.

White then considered all of the input to create a final number — Pats by 6 — which was distributed to the clients.

O'Brien said he decided to pick New England by 6 because he believed Philadelphia is a stronger team than Carolina, New England's opponent in last season's Super Bowl. New England was favored by 7 in that game but failed to cover.

I have been told that for other games, once the Las Vegas Sports Consultants set the line, the line is offered to a small group of professional gamblers, whose behavior is used to tweak the number. So 6 was the "virgin line" that came out of the books, but it quickly moved to 7, indicating more money has gone on New England than Philadelphia.

The question is whether line movement on a game that is so public, so much bet by amateurs, tells you the same thing as the movement in, say, Week 16's San Francisco-Washington match that nobody cares about? Is there a wisdom of amateur bettors, or should you bet against amateurs? Skip Sauer says bet against the movement. I say wait. If you get the extra half point, go Eagles.

I don't have a subscription to The Atlantic, so I comment mostly on Hugh's quote from Jonathan Rauch and the conversation on his show yesterday. He's now posted the entire article (for which we should thank Rauch), and I have edited some of this after reading it and listening to the debate. But most of my points seem to still hold.

On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside.

Of course, there are other choices. One can choose to work quietly within the party to effect change slowly. One can run campaigns for ideas that lead to planks being built.

Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics.

Again, a false dichotomy. I think this is the sentence that offends: Either anti-abortion planks or violence. What on earth is the man thinking in writing this sentence? He now says he wasn't. But I think the slip is revelatory. Even if he believes that most religious conservatives would not be bombers, there are enough that it warrants mention. I'm sorry, but the mea culpa doesn't really suffice. As Hugh pointed out, Larry Summers will probably be pressed to hire more females for positions at Harvard, even if they are not the most qualified persons, to make amends for posing a reasonable point for critical discussion. What penance will Rauch serve? He'll probably argue "being on Hewitt's show." Not quite the same thing.

The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard.

I could not figure out the thought here when I read Hugh's excerpt. Is he actually justifying SDS and the Black Panthers and the SLA? Listening to Rauch (and thanks Steve for Replay Radio -- it's been a Godsend) I see where it might have come from now, but without the rest of the article this made no sense.

When Michael Moore receives a hero’s welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around.

I take Rauch to mean by this that the political process is best served by an adversarial position. But this means that the debate between right and left is apocalyptic, like a battle between ethnic groups. What Rauch sees in the Christian right is the Other; he sees those who are unlike him, below him, not just on the wrong side but with black hearts. I get that: It's what religious conservatives on American campuses feel every day.

But just as trying to defeat the Right rather than debate the Right on American campuses has hurt them, so too will the attempt to create the Battle for Middle Earth out of Campaign '08 hurt the American political system.

While looking for something else for a student, I came across this from the Dallas Fed's annual report. The whole collection of these, featuring the work of economist Michael Cox and business reporter Richard Alm, are well worth your time. But this was one of those charts I thought was really creative.



What fascinated me was the focus on creativity and the absence of growth in the most recent economic expansion for people of analytical skills. We have known for quite some time that the returns to physical skills -- turning screws and lifting bales -- have fallen. But the middle two categories are the ones that will make me wonder all night: Why?

Got teens thinking about careers? Show them this.

While at MOB, I had three good questions thrown at me about economics, and I don't know that I answered any of them adequately.

• Nihilist in Golf Pants asked whether the low value of the dollar is a good thing or a bad thing. I put this question to my students in their first lecture of intermediate macroeconomic theory yesterday and they correctly answered "it depends". (This is the first answer I teach them on the road to being economists; it works in almost any situation.) An exchange rate is an intermediate goal; the ultimate goals of policy are living standards, most often expressed as robust growth in GDP and employment and price stability. A high real exchange rate will be helpful to some countries at some stage of economic development and a low real exchange rate will be helpful to others. A cheap dollar helps exporters; a dear one helps importers. So, yes, it depends.
• Chad the Elder asked two questions (one I think back at the station) from his reading of the 1/13 issue of the Economist. One was about this article on neuroeconomics, which was part of this year's American Economics Association meeting agenda. I confess that the reporting on this research is a little troubling, but the research itself isn't. Economists have long studied anomalies, which is an empirical result that does not seem like rational behavior without some really wild assumptions. We have long known about such anomalies in dictator games or hyperbolic lending. We've even had a section of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, published by the AEA, which covered anomalies. My reaction is, so what. Rationality is an assumption, and in my Friedmanite methodology it matters only to the extent that it allows me to predict well. Now if somehow the studies would lead us to say "these types of decisions can be reliably predicted to occur in the limbic system and not the prefrontal cortex", you've improved my ability to predict behavior and that's a good thing. But if the purpose of this is simply to say nanananabooboo to economists as being silly assuming all behavior is rational, well, you've not told me anything new.
• Speaking of prediction, the Elder also asked about this article on ECRI, a group of economists who forecast in the tradition of Arthur Burns, Wesley Mitchell and Geoffrey Moore. They are said to have predicted the last recession and have done a better job lately than has, say, the Conference Board. The difference between forecasting GDP and forecasting recessions is large, as ECRI describes. And so on that I agree with the article. But I wouldn't exactly throw out the Conference Board's work; their recent change to a 1% decline rule for calling recessions strikes me as an attempt to deal with noise in the individual series that make up the Index of Leading Indicators. We use a similar method to the Conference Board. Since ECRI's indicators are proprietary, all we have to go on is that they called the last recession right and the Conference Board did not. The world is littered with failed models that got the right call two or three turns ago.

Craig Westover is continuing the discussion of our show discussion on Saturday on school choice, including an exchange over magnet schools and a response from Liz Mische, who gets credit for being a very focused guest and easy interview. The show was so interesting that I left a couple of questions on my pad unanswered. One of them was

If public school choice was effective, why do we not see more competition between them? I'm told that there's a "gentleman's agreement" not to do this, which in the private sector goes by the name "collusion". Is there public school competition? Should we ask school districts to eschew this gentleman's agreement?

Turns out there's one that has done so, as reported in this morning's PioneerPress.

The Mounds View public school district has spent $15,000 to produce an infomercial to attract students to its schools.

Such marketing is not unusual among private schools, but it is a sign of changing times among public school districts with declining enrollments as they compete for students and the state money that follows them.

"If we can recruit three students, we have recovered the cost," said Colin Sokolowski, the district's public relations director.

Last year, the district spent about $10,000 to market its schools, an effort that helped attract 200 students. This year, district officials are ratcheting up with the video and $8,000 allotted to advertising.

If it takes that little to attract 200 students, that is suggestive that there is no competition out there. I note this in my own work frequently: Students who receive a letter from us encouraging them to be econ majors (after they've taken one of our classes and performed well) say nobody else does this.

My question remains: Why aren't more schools doing this?

Other districts, too, see the need to sell themselves, though their approaches can differ.

The West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan school district recently hired communications consultant Colleen McCarty-Gould in part because so many students in the district attend nonpublic schools. Part of her job,
McCarty-Gould said, is to get the word out that the neighborhood schools are good.

In Roseville, an advisory committee recently suggested that the district consider some marketing efforts.

Rather than take Mounds View's approach, Roseville Superintendent John Thein said he prefers to "invest our resources in programming.'' Thein says the district has attracted about 550 out-of-district students with "word of mouth" and the "good vibes" given off by students attracted to a good and diverse education.

Hopkins also is turning to marketing this year, creating a PowerPoint sales pitch set to music, spending about $2,000 for ads and inviting prospective students to look around.

Any economist will tell you that collusive agreements contain the seeds of their own destruction. What will the education world look like when these school districts compete even more? As I asked first on the show Saturday, have we got enough choice already?

Matt Abe is asking the same questions.

There is a story of two faculty members, husband and wife art professors at UCLA, who resigned from their posts because the university did not punish a student who used a handgun in a performance piece.

In the brief performance on Nov. 29, the student appeared to point a loaded handgun at his head and pull the trigger, a student and law enforcement officials told the Los Angeles Times.

The weapon didn't fire, but after the student left the room a noise that sounded like a gunshot was heard outside.

Police said no one was hurt and it wasn't known if the firearm was real. Prosecutors said there wasn't enough evidence for charges, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

According to a separate report in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers):

Several students apparently were frightened, and believed he had killed himself or someone else. Mr. Deutch (the student -- kb) subsequently walked back into the classroom, his performance piece apparently concluded.

Robert J. Naples, dean of students at UCLA, said counselors and other university officials had talked to Mr. Deutch just after the incident and decided to continue allowing him to attend classes after determining that he was not dangerous to himself or others. Mr. Deutch turned in a fake gun to the dean's office and said it was the one he had used in the classroom, said Nancy Greenstein, a spokeswoman for the campus police.

The professor for this class had done performance art with guns as well back in the 1970s,

Mr. Burden's own well-known performance piece, "Shoot," was considered one of the most provocative and controversial of the 1970s. A friend shot Mr. Burden in the arm from 13 feet away. Mr. Burden pointed out that the performance had taken place in a private art gallery, not a classroom. And, he said, times have changed.

"That was 33 years ago," he said. "Columbine has happened, 9/11 has happened. There are restrictions." Mr. Burden, who now focuses on sculpture rather than shocking performance pieces, said, "I've moved forward. I've changed, too."

"If this young man wanted to go and rent a loft downtown and play Russian roulette, he in my mind could do that, and the art world would decide whether he was an interesting artist or not," he continued. "That's completely different than doing it in a classroom and terrorizing 27 people."

If this had happened to some young art professor I might have a little more sympathy for his or her pique at the performance, but given the fellow's own history, couldn't he have anticipated that someone might wish to riff his own work? Were there any restrictions on this in the class syllabus or assignment? Had there been a classroom discussion?

Eugene Volokh thinks these are just weird people. I think it's entirely possible that the retirement is part of some other performance, but to which audience?

Mark Yost has written a Minnesota blogosphere review piece in the PioneerPress which gives prominent billing to the Northern Alliance.

But Power Line is just the tip of the iceberg. Minnesota is replete with bloggers, including Fraters Libertas (http://www.fraterslibertas.com/), part of the Northern Alliance, which includes SCSU Scholars, Captain's Quarters, Shot in the Dark and others.
...
About 100 of these Minnesota bloggers gathered Saturday at Keegan's in North Minneapolis for their semi-annual confab. (Many can be found there on Thursday nights, too, for the pub's weekly trivia contest.) In attendance was the Nihilist in Golf Pants, Chad The Elder, Saint Paul, Captain Ed, Atomizer — to name a few. Some use screen names to guard their identity, but for most it's merely part of the online persona they've cultivated.

Which of course is a reference to the MOB gathering. I saw Yost there, and indeed it was the longest conversation I had with him, to the extent that the din allowed for conversation. (Apologies, by the way, to anyone I spoke to who thought I was out of touch. Years of playing bass guitar in 70s rock bands has left me a little hard of hearing. Ask Mitch about the volume in my headphones.) I guess I made a good impression.

Bloggers like the instantaneous feedback they get from their online posts. Over time, the good ones develop loyal followings. And their fans aren't merely cranks with far-out ideas and too much time on their hands. For instance, King Banaian (his real name), who blogs at http://www.scsuscholars.com/, is the chair of the St. Cloud State Economics Department.

A group of us this morning reading Yost had a good laugh at "his real name", since it's highly unlikely that King Banaian could be an invention of anything at all. (Short story: my first name is my maternal grandmother's maiden family name. Follow that? There's a longer story, but that requires beer.) But there's a more telling point here about anonymity of bloggers. In my case, I don't need it and I don't want it. I don't need it because I'm tenured. Yes, I'm a department chair, but unlike many universities my position is elected by my department and not likely to be challenged because, frankly, nobody else wants the job. I'm unlikely to lose my job or any money from blogging here. As to friends, most liberals on campus knew of my views long before I started blogging as a result of the campus discuss email list. They are the most frequent objects of my online ire. I've got a couple of people still unwilling to say hello after this story in 2002; suffice to say I sleep well.

Second, I want to brand my name, not a screen name. How many people have heard of GlennReynolds.com? I would say it's a lot less than those who've heard of Instapundit. In some cases you might not want to brand your own name because your name has a brand already which is different than your blogging persona. I somewhat think that's the case for PowerLine: There may not be a synergy between them. For media people like Hewitt, writers like Sullivan, or academics like me, there's nothing to brand but me. (I've sent this post to Prof. Reynolds to see if he feels there's a brand in Instapundit that serves him as Prof. Reynolds.)

Back to Yost:

Blogs have had two important effects. They provide a gathering place for like-minded thinkers. Fraters Libertas has become a safe gathering place for conservatives who live in deep blue states like Minnesota and used to have to hide their (political) proclivities like a child molester.

That was certainly not the intent of SCSUScholars. We were told the discuss list was a bad place and we should be civil and limit debate. My goal was to create Scholars to provide those wanting to speak a place that would remain open to conservatives and liberals; the name SCSU Scholars was to reflect the goals of the SCSU Association of Scholars to create a place for reasoned discourse. If I wanted to have a personal blog, I'd've given it a different name. This, by the way, is my thesis for why I have fewer readers but lots of people linking in to this site. The conversation is occurring between blogs, not within Haloscan. I didn't foresee that, but I like it.

Blogs also have shown that column writing isn't rocket science. Indeed, the only difference between a post on Fraters and many newspaper columns is that the latter will get a second read from an editor.

I wouldn't go that far. A blog can be a diary of links -- "here's a cool thing I saw today" -- or simply throwing out a question, as I did Saturday for NARN. Few of the posts here are column length or even have a full thought within them. It's a place where I go to develop my thoughts, to write, and to get feedback. Thus having an editor's second read isn't that valuable to me. My readers are smart people who know about the specific topics I post: Not to stroke your egos too much, but your opinion has great value to me as a writer. I tell my students to write for "the reader looking over your shoulder." On a blog, that reader is a click away.

UPDATE: Reynolds emails,

I certainly wasn't thinking about "branding" when I started. I think InstaPundit has been somewhat helpful to my scholarly career, actually, though.

No doubt so.

This catches me a bit by surprise. Yulia was certainly the most charismatic figure of the Orange Revolution, and she did a bang-up job at the Energy Ministry during her time, and she has a clear idea of what she wants to do (and I assume has worked it out with Yushchenko.) On the other hand, her appointment to the premiership was probably the thing most feared by former president Leonid Kuchma, who didn't exactly endear himself to her by tossing her in the clink. She's got a dicey past and bound to be a lightening rod going forward.

Yushchenko has signaled he wants lots of changes right away and put in the one person who has shown a willingness to act forcefully. I'm now pretty sure this will be an eventful year in Ukrainian politics, which means I will have more to cover on Ukraine.

I'm sure as well Rocketman will cover her because -- how else to say this? -- she's a babe. And on that, who can be divisive?

Must get ready for class, more after 4. Meanwhile, read this piece from Joanne Jacobs on how we approach high school dropouts. Should we aim low or high for them? Trying to give them small successes (to build up their self-esteem?) doesn't look like it's working.

The student newspaper is back to printing and manages to report on a group of protestors of the Inauguration who marched to City Hall. (

As President George W. Bush was sworn in for his second term of office in Washington, D.C., a coalition of organizations gathered to form an inauguration day protest on campus.

CODEPINK and MoveOn St. Cloud organized the event and other groups including WEG (Women's Equality Group), CAASA (Campus Advocates Against Sexual Assault), PUP (People Uniting For Peace) and Alternatives to War co-sponsored the event.

The protest included an informational session in Atwood and a march through Division Street to the St. Cloud City Hall where an informal rally was conducted.

Why? The mayor hates Bush as much as our campus Bolsheviks.

I walked by when they were getting ready for their march, about 12:45pm. There were less than 20 people standing outside on a day when it was about 15 degrees outside. Yet this manages to get coverage in our campus paper. Lovely.

Mary Ballengee, a staff member at the Women's Center, participated in the march and brought her daughter along with her. Ballengee said she would carry a sign that read "No more education money for the war."

Why not use the money for war when you pull your kid out of school to march in a protest?

She said that while everyone participating in the march had different reasons for joining, most of them shared a common goal of ending the war in Iraq."The people are demonstrating for a call to peace and we are not going to consent to four more years of pre-emptive war-making, deception, corruption and blindness to environmental issues," Ballengee said.

None of these protests ever go on without some reference to "the environment", which indicates the anti-capitalist mentality of these protestors. I don't call them "watermelon Bolsheviks" lightly. They are common on our campus, and others.

Along with the march at SCSU, demonstrations were organized across the country and there was a call for students nationwide to walk out of class at noon to join in on the marches.

This is pretty common as well: Captain Ed reports this morning on the absurd situation at the University of Oregon, where even the ubiquitous "Support Our Troops" ribbons are being chucked from campus.

At least one of their rank seems to recognize the silliness of these protests.

I understand that people want to stand up for what they believe in. After all, I disagree with Bush's policies enough that I actually voted for a useless placeholder like Kerry. Nevertheless, I can see little useful purpose in protesting the legitimate election of a candidate months after his election.

So what were the protesters hoping to accomplish? It's not like the American public didn't know that half the voting population did not want Bush to be President. It is a pointless endeavor. Protesters are either "preaching to the choir" or being ridiculed by their opposition.

Despite what the participants may have thought, the protest was nothing more than an exercise in futility. Shakespeare's Macbeth comes to mind: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

That was great -- the Macbeth quote makes me wonder if this student has had Scholar Jack for a prof -- but look at his suggestion for what they should do instead:

If you truly feel strongly about an issue, invest in it. Don't be half-hearted. Try civil disobedience. History has shown that it works pretty well.

If you don't want to risk spending time in jail, try becoming a teacher. Teachers not only have a captive audience, but their students are far more open to to different ideas than another adult who is already set in their ways.

That, my friends, is why I blog. Because you don't have to be a captive audience. You can engage in civil disobedience at your government school.

There are plenty of recapitulations of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers gathering at Keegan's Saturday night (I think Chad the Elder is working on the definitive list), so I'll confine myself on a busy day to a couple of quick observations.

• At last, I got to see Matt Abe in a place other than the Capitol. Having him, Craig and his commented Clive, Flash and Purplestater from Centerfeud all together debating education reform after the show we did on it on NARN was special. It reminded me of rolling out of a grad seminar and arguing into the night at Walter's in Claremont with Afghan fries.
• Flash recollecting his time as Crump Farrell's student. Crump was a finance professor here and one of those who championed the marriage of finance and economics. A gruff guy every student loved who had him, feared by all who had not.
• The Big Swede is really big, and just as interesting as the Crazy Uke. Watching him and James try to sneak a Panter Mignon or a miniMac at the bar was also reminiscent of secret smoking in the past. (Was it cigars? -- ed.)
• David Strom is not even the brightest person in his own house. Margaret is now on the short list of people I want to have over to my last supper. I suppose he can come too.
• How many times do you get to leave the bar with the gal in pajamas? Another item off the checklist as we move towards my last supper.
• What in the hell do they put on roads these days? I woke up Sunday and backed the T-Reg out of the garage, and it had changed color to the spray on Captain Fishsticks' beard. It's getting a bath while I have lunch.

Pajamas?

Pajamas?

Pajamas?

Pajamas? (I hope!?!)

He's got no pajamas.

But you can. See you at Keegans. 5-9 Saturday. Bring 'em.

I am making an offer of this space to you to give questions for my discussion on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Craig Westover, columnist for the PioneerPress, and Elizabeth Mische, executive director of Partnership for Choice in Education. The discussion will be during the second hour, at 1pm Central Time. You can listen in from here.

It's instructive to look at PCE's FAQ. I am especially interested in good, tough questions about school choice and vouchers. Let me briefly outline where I want to go with the discussion, and then ask you to put comments in the comment box for this post. I will read them on the air tomorrow as time allows. If you want your name on the air, let me know.

Here are my first three questions for tomorrow:

1. As PCE says on its homepage, Minnesota already has a great tradition for choice in education -- public school open enrollment; charter schools; post-secondary education options (for HS students to get college classes instead of HS classes); and low income families can get tax credits and subsidized loans. Aren't these enough? What's the benefit of expanding school choice from here? (Follow-up questions are likely to come from the mediocre grade Minnesota's education tax credit program received the Friedman Foundation.)
2. This appears to be an issue that crosses party lines. According to Craig, Elizabeth is a liberal Democrat who supports school choice. The Democratic Leadership Council (the New Democrats that started Bill Clinton's national career) says they too support at least public school choice. But they also say we "shouldn't support increased choice without corresponding increases in public accountability," which sounds an awful lot like the fear of some Republicans that vouchers could lead to a loss of control for private schools. Where are you on this issue? Do vouchers in fact invite the fox into the henhouse?
3. Craig wrote early this month in the newspaper that

   A major rationale for school choice, and a requirement for its ultimate justification, is that rather than harm government schools, it creates an environment conducive to strengthening the public education subsystem. School choice offers an opportunity to break the monopoly that hinders improvement of government schools.

   Friday the Wall Street Journal editorialized (subscribers only) about a letter campaign by the American Federation of Teachers hurled at the Journal after they printed an editorial critical of teacher's unions by Terry Moe of the Hoover Institution. We certainly know of other places where teachers unions locally have held enormous power over political decisions. Do you think unions hold too much power over the public schol system? Do you think vouchers would reform teachers unions, or would they lead to the end of unionism in education?

I have a few more I'll keep under my hat; we can't let Craig and Elizabeth have too much of a heads up. I look forward to your questions as well.

Viktor Yushchenko has branded his own website. I am sending a note to him to read Blog and consider putting one on his site. Imagine: the president of a country who blogged. One of the dangers he faces is restricted access to communications from people with specific knowledge (something I know we talked about when he ran the National Bank.) A blog, as Hugh Hewitt points out, opens those lines in a focused and unique way. And he can get that information in Ukrainian, Russian and English if he has someone translating between his sites.

I've been travelling some, so I don't see the basement of my house much lately. The basement bathroom is called the "men's crisis center" and tends to collect books of short essays and other books that are traditionally called "coffee table books" for reading. My son and I use that room. I have