With the departure of the University of South Dakota yesterday to Division I, the North Central Conference is no more.

"You can't have a conference unless you have teams," Commissioner Roger Thomas said. "Teams were very content to stay in the region they are at, and we couldn't convince any schools to join our league. We'll do everything we can to help our remaining schools as they search for what's best for them."

Thomas said the league likely will play its final games after the 2007-08 school year.

The NCAA Division II conference, once a national power, has been losing members since North Dakota State University left for Division I and Morningside moved to the NAIA in 2004.

The University of North Dakota announced in June that it will move to Division I in all sports and Augustana (S.D.) announced this month that it is looking at the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference.

St. Cloud State has played in the NCC since the 1970s, formerly part of the Northern Sun. All three of the Minnesota schools currently in the NCC -- SCSU, MSU-Mankato and Minnesota-Duluth -- have asked about joining NSIC. Its commissioner, Butch Raymond, came to SCSU the same year I did and coached 13 seasons here, retiring as its winningest basketball coach and joining the school's Hall of Fame last year. I hear from some people that he and athletic director Morris Kurtz did not end on a high note when Raymond left the university, but I also note the same people are those who are clamoring for us to jump to Division I with USD, UND, NDSU and Northern Colorado. Most of them fear that the quality of football played here will deteriorate.

It may, but the cost of taking that program to Division I, especially when we chose to build a 4,200 seat stadium only a few years ago, may just be too high. The Dakota schools have stadia much, much larger. We have never had the same number of scholarships those schools have had, and the move to D-I would increase the number required, at least in the long run (you can have transition rules in a new conference, and some would like to reform the NCC as a D-I conference.) Winona State, last year's D-II basketball champion (and slayer of the Univ. of Minnesota in an exhibition game earlier this month) plays in the NSIC, and we already play many of those teams in basketball now.

It is nevertheless difficult for a program to go backwards, and that is how a return to the Northern Sun will seem to longtime Huskies fans.

The news that some judge decided we needed more colorful, differently-sized money to help the blind has gotten a number of people riled up. Captain Ed, whose First Mate is legally blind (and she fooled me the first two times I met her!) says the blind have coping mechanisms already learned to deal with paper currency. Learned Foot takes time off from his zaniness to make the sober point that the Constitutional questions, though dubious, were botched by government attorneys. I'll guess someone gets chewed out for bad representation at the Treasury.

Two points I'd raise. First, a friend said to me last night he cannot understand why we still have one-dollar bills. (His family is Canadian, and he thinks loonies and two-nies are great.) He said the only reason we don't have dollar coins is because the ink-and-paper industry will not let the US retire the dollar note. It's worth remembering that the Sacajawea coin was in part a sop to the copper industry. The ol' Susan B. Anthony's biggest problem was that it was hard to distinguish by feel to the quarter, particularly to the blind, so on came the 'sackie' with the smooth edge. Does the court intend to review coin design? Moreover, new dollar coins with rotating presidential heads on them -- imitators of the 50-state quarters -- are scheduled to come out next year. If people wanted to hold the coin dollars, wouldn't sackies have been more popular? "But it would save us $500 million a year!" you say. That's true only if the demand for currency -- which provides the US with seigniorage -- stays at current levels.

Which begins my second point: Much of the U.S.'s seigniorage revenue comes from demand for US currency held overseas, which is about 2/3 of the currency the US creates. Not all of that is for Colombian drug lords, either. Most currency holdings are just developing country households who use the dollar as a saving instrument because stable banking systems don't exist there. When the US changed the style of its currency in the 1990s, older US currency became less desirable. (It was common when traveling to the xUSSR right after the fall of communism to go to a bank and be sure your bills were the newest printing, or else face a 5% discount in Russia, Ukraine, etc. The discount in Ukraine when the new $100 bills came out in March 1996 were reported at even 7% some places in Kyiv.) The value of these dollar holdings by farmers living away from the central cities of African countries, for example, would fall as a result. You wonder if this judge realizes that as his ruling spreads out in news around the world, he may have just caused a substantial drop in the wealth of the world's poor. Such losses could cause the dollar to be sold in favor of euros or yen as those families shift their wealth into more stable currencies. (US coins, by the way, are highly unlikely to be found in circulation elsewhere except Canada and Mexico.)

Not that I dislike money with colors and shapes. But fiat money isn't money by government fiat, it's money because others accept it in return for real things. What causes that acceptance is quite subjective. I still use old Ukrainian 100 karbovanets notes for bookmarks at home; one worth about $2, when they stopped circulating in Sept. 1996 they were worth about $.00056.

Via Chad, I read a post at First Things' On the Square blog critiquing Pope Benedict's view of poverty. The pope is quoted as saying there is a need to "eliminate the structural causes linked to the system of government of the world economy." The writer focuses on the mistake of looking at the distribution of goods and services rather than the production of them. The conversation reminds me first of John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, in which Mill says distribution is a matter of human choice (production being more governed by laws of nature). Still, Mill does find that changes in the rules of distribution affect the production of goods and services. In short, how you decide to slice the pie changes the size of the pie. Thus the pie metaphor really fails to appreciate the workings of an economy. Miller (and Chad) are correct to point this out.

But I'm more reminded of what the Invisible Hand means: There is no "system of government of the world economy." The 'economy' does not exist: What exists are millions of individual transactions, which as a by-product give us a set of prices that provide every individual with incentives to truck, barter and exchange in certain patterns depending on their gifts. Nobody calls out the prices either as a Walrasian auctioneer, a benevolent dictator, or a Marxist governmental form. Prices are not intentional. Making them intentional tries to stand between the market and the state as the organizer of economic activity. Friedrich Hayek writes in The Road to Serfdom:

But the fact that we have to resort to direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function. To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies— these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity. This does not mean that it is possible to find some "middle way" between competition and central direction, though nothing seems at first more plausible, or is more likely to appeal to reasonable people. Mere common sense proves a treacherous guide in this field. Although competition can bear some admixture of regulation, it cannot be combined with planning to any extent we like without ceasing to operate as an effective guide to production. Both competition and central direction become poor and inefficient tools if they are incomplete, and a mixture of the two - means that neither will work.

Yet what most religious writers about economics espouse is some way to put God in the middle. It sounds reasonable, but man "putting God in the market" is an act of man trying to be God, and that is the original sin.

A new study by Robert Whaples of Wake Forest University of the opinions of economists on policy questions show more agreement than disagreement on many issues. The study finds that economists are broadly agreed on the undesirability of tariffs, agricultural subsidies, restricting outsourcing, and subsidizing sports stadia. There's a lot less agreement on environmental issues. While there's general agreement that something needs to be done on Social Security, there isn't much agreement on what to do.

Comparing this to the Klein and Stern results, I see broad similarities. Market interventions appear to be something economists agree on, but they don't. Both studies find a lack of consensus on the minimum wage, which I simply find shocking. The latter paper splits its respondents into self-identified Republicans and Democrats, and while there are significant differences on all issues regarding economic intervention, even Republican economists don't seem to agree on policy questions regarding economic intervention. The one source of agreement in the Klein/Stern study is government ownership of enterprises -- neither Democrat nor Republican economists support it.

Arnold Kling's reaction is that the Whaples study provides evidence that a government run by the elite of the American Economic Association would be desirable. Having looked also at the Klein and Stern results -- and perhaps being more libertarian than Republican -- I disagree.

Tyler Cowen reviews a new book on the effects of what they see to be increased job turnover.

Three in five jobs for 22- to 55-year-old workers last three years or less. In a typical quarter of the year, about one in 13 jobs ends. For certain obvious reasons, labor-market turbulence has a reputation as a wrecker of lives, families and pocketbooks.

But is it really? Economists Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane have their doubts. On closer inspection, they note, job turnover and firm disappearance have positive effects, in the aggregate. A clerk's job at a retail warehouse is replaced by a computer, but the warehouse firm can use the savings to hire a better and better-paid office manager. As workers lose jobs in one niche or sector, they gain in another, moving on to better jobs and higher pay. In the software sector, new businesses are more productive, over a five-year period, than the firms they replace. This new-business productivity gain, the authors show, is true generally across sectors--generating efficiency, products and, most important, jobs. And new businesses tend to pay more.

In short, America is not becoming a nation of part-time Wal-Mart cashiers or burger flippers. In four of the five sectors studied by the authors--semiconductors, software, financial services, retail food and trucking--the growth rate for full-time jobs exceeds the growth rate for jobs in general. (Retail food is the exception.)

So while volatility of job experiences -- increased turnover in the aggregate, if not at the individual level -- causes problems for particular families, it is in the aggregate desirable. This is more evidence of "the churn", a term popularized by researchers at the Dallas Federal Reserve:
"The paradox that innovation is both central to economic progress and, at the same time, the cause of many economic difficulties..." It's also happening in China.

For a variety of social, cultural and intellectual reasons, many elites look down on occupations they deem to be menial or lacking in intellectual challenges.

The ability to make excellent, stand-up presentations before an audience is one talent US elites value highly.

I was recently blown away by the universally high level of presentations given by my students who work or have worked in restaurants as servers.

I teach MIS at the college level. Each student in my class must write a "real world" paper that analyzes a recently installed computer application. Each student must interview other employees, write the paper, and give a presentation to the rest of the class on the application, their findings, etc. The majority of my students are older - average age, 27. This semester, I had a significant number of students who work or worked as restaurant servers. What hit me was the overwhelming excellence of each server's individual presentation. In the past I had had students with similar backgrounds but there was no critical mass. Until this class, it did not register with me that there is a universal talent for making presentations that shows up for people successful in this field.

"Why?"

To be successful, servers must: make eye contact and verbally communicate with customers; succinctly provide information about daily specials; listen acutely; get orders right, the first time; know the importance of smiling and promptly fixing something that goes wrong. These traits, learned on the job, develop a presence and confidence many people simply don't have. I'd hire any of them in a minute.

These servers demonstrated a very high ability to perform the same function that many elites use to justify their own superior self-image.

If you're thinking that revision to GDP today is a sign that the economy is stronger than we thought, I'd say think about what it means to have real final sales flat at 2.1% growth versus last quarter. As I said last month, that's the number I pay attention to most, and a goodly part of the upward revision was just firms being shown to increase inventories rather than decrease them. Most of the rest of the increase was a revision downward in the number for imports -- the international data are often sources of these revisions. Altogether, a blah report.

The Beige Book report from the Fed for the 9th District (Minneapolis) reported a tight labor market. The housing sector is as bad elsewhere in the state as we've said about St. Cloud and indeed the rest of the nation.

Commercial construction was up. Recent commercial construction activity was robust in the Bismarck, N.D., area, according to a representative of a commercial real estate firm there. The value of October commercial building permits in Sioux Falls, S.D., was about even with last year's record levels, and office construction was up slightly. A Minneapolis developer hired a design firm to begin plans for a large new office tower in its central business district. Plans were announced for the redevelopment of a historic skyscraper into a luxury hotel in downtown Minneapolis. However, residential construction continued to slow. October residential construction permits for Rochester, Minn., were down 42 percent in value from a year earlier.

I have noticed, more in my introductory classes than with my majors, a surprising number of students with laptops. Some faculty have wondered aloud whether it would be better if all our students had them. But according to a study by faculty at Carnegie-Mellon University, it ain't necessarily so. The following observerations come from a Chronicle of Higher Education article I read first (subscriber link):

In fact, a report on the study says, students with laptops tend to spend "significantly more time" working on assignments than other students do. But that extra time is not reflected in their finished products: Students with laptops get roughly the same grades as those who trek to computer labs. Instead of saving time, the report argues, laptop users are often killing it -- firing off e-mail messages, sending instant messages, and surfing the Web.

What's more, students with laptops may grow overly reliant on them, as instructors in one typography course at a Midwestern university found out. "Students reported spending long periods of time searching the Web for pictures rather than sketching and then scanning what they needed," says the report. "Instructors had to sometimes tell students to use paper rather than their computers to store ideas."

A student today, on the other hand, talks to me about his assignment and shows it to me on his laptop. But it won't save to his hard disk so he can mail it. He logs into our campus wireless internet, copies and pastes it in an email to me, while I watch, and then see it pop into my mailbox at the instructor's station. Is this a good use of the resource? I don't know; that's the best one I had seen in some time though, and it ain't much.

For those of you who wait patiently for dogblogging of the darling Buttercup of the Banaian clan, your wait will end soon. Littlest has taken to picturing the Boston Terrorist in many poses, and has uploaded some pictures for you all. We'll share them on Fridays throughout December.

To make penance for our failure to put up pets before now, we offer a midweek look at the other pet of the house. This is Pepper, who adopted us through our porch door three years ago. He just sat there waiting for us to break down, a good judge of character.

Buttercup doesn't let Peru (short for Pepperoo, as he is more often called here) up on the main floor often, so this is a special scene for him to be posed near the front door. The basement doesn't make for good pictures, so you won't see much of the P-boy. He is probably half domestic short-hair and half Burmese, given his temperament and odd voice. He's more a lapdog than Buttercup, and interfered with my writing up this post last night by jumping onto me while this picture uploaded.

Littlest doesn't play with dolls; she dresses up the animals.

Courtesy of reader Peter Lorenzi, a table of information on universities now versus forty years ago.

1966	Characteristic	2006|	Change
2,329	Number of colleges and universities	4,216	81%
6,390,000	Total college enrollment	17,648,000	176%
40	Percent of college students that are	58	45%
	women
9.8	Percent of people over 25 with four or	27.6	182%
	more years of college
20,617	Doctoral degrees awarded	50,500	145%
157,726	Masters degrees awarded	603,000	282%
17,795	MBAs awarded	101,000	468%
558,534	Bachelor's degrees awarded	1,488,000	166%
139,183	Associate degrees awarded	686,000	393%
31,695	Professional degrees awarded	87,400	176%
$1,456	Private four-year annual tuition and fees	$22,218	1426%
$360	Public four-year annual tuition and fees	$5,836	1521%
17	Percent first-year students who smoke frequently	5.8	-66%
64.2	Percent first-year males drink beer frequent/occasional	49.1	-24%
$12.50	Annual expenditures by colleges (billions)	$315.40	2423%
$0.71	Federal budget outlays for college (billions)	$39.80	5537%
$3.50	State appropriations higher ed operating expenses (bil)	$66.60	1803%
$1.48	Gifts to colleges and universities (billions)	$25.60	1630%
$0.18	Net income, NCAA basketball tournament (millions)	$470.00	261011%
$0.97	Harvard endowment (billions)	$29.20	2895%
$14,402	Average salary, full professor	$94,738	558%
$10,829	Average salary, associate professor	$67,187	520%
$8,941	Average salary, assistant professor	$56,298	530%
$19,038	Median salary, college president	$192,155	909%
$1,956	College expenditures per student	$17,872	814%

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed. Peter was struck by the rise in income from the NCAA basketball tournament. What interests me even more is that college expenditures per student -- I'm not sure what that includes or excludes, has risen less than expenditures by colleges and universities, which has risen less than federal budget outlays to colleges. Is the federal government handing out middle class entitlements by taking on an increasing cost of college education? And are colleges and universities increasing their expenditures because of third-party payers like the federal government?

I was writing up the latest QBR last weekend and had to say something about the end of the rises in the Fed funds rate that came this fall. Looking at the latest Fed funds probabilities made me think it pretty easy to say the Fed is done with tightening.

So Fed Chair Ben Bernanke's comments on the short-term outlook for the economy this morning showed up first on the Wall Street Journal with the headline "Bernanke Warns of Inflation Risks, Suggesting No Rate Cut Coming Soon." His remarks are characterized as "hawkish". This is what raised the alarm:

Looking forward, core inflation seems likely to moderate gradually over the next year or so. Some of the factors that pushed up core inflation in the recent past--in particular, energy prices and shelter costs--appear likely to be more neutral in the coming year, and inflation expectations remain contained. Moreover, if, as seems most probable, the economy grows at a rate modestly below its potential for a time, pressures on resource utilization should ease a bit.

However, as with the outlook for economic activity, there are substantial uncertainties about the inflation forecast. In the case of inflation, the risks to the forecast seem primarily to the upside. Given the current level of inflation, a failure of inflation to moderate as expected would be especially troublesome.

One factor that we are watching carefully is labor costs, which depend on both the compensation received by workers and labor productivity. Although the available indicators give somewhat different signals, it seems clear that labor costs--which account for roughly two-thirds of firm's total costs--have been rising more quickly of late. Some part of this acceleration no doubt reflects the current tightness in labor markets. For example, anecdotal reports suggest that businesses have been finding it difficult to recruit well-qualified workers in certain occupations.

We've always run a question in the survey we do locally asking difficulty in recruiting. When we get more people saying it's getting more difficult than saying less difficult (what most economists would call a 'diffusion index'), that's a bullish sign for the economy. And so far our data has that number positive (including the one to be released soon for fall.)

The Washington Post finds no such alarms. Stefan Geens sees Bernanke being in an unenviable position -- tighter money to combat inflation, looser money to prop up the housing market (where there's a lot of inventory even while sales are up, so prices are down.)

Interestingly, other Fed presidents appear to have been more hawkish after Bernanke's speech. Take in particular this from Philadelphia Fed president Charles Plosser:

Now, over the past two years, the FOMC has moved the federal funds rate up considerably from its historically low levels, so it is possible that inflation could return to acceptable levels without further policy actions. On the other hand, the fed funds rate adjusted for inflation remains relatively low. Thus, to my mind, there remains some risk that policy is not yet firm enough to ensure a return to price stability over a reasonable time horizon.

He notes earlier in the speech that the trend growth rate of the real GDP has shifted down to 3% from 3.5%, so that growth in excess of 3% might be unsustainable (and job growth therefore is probably below the 150-175,000 monthly number we've come to use from memory the last five years.) He blames this shift on both a data revision in July and demographics:

In fact, over the next decade or so we might expect to see trend growth decline further as the growth rate of the labor force slows. Although we frequently note the role of productivity in determining trend growth, the contribution of labor force growth is often overlooked. As the baby-boomers retire, demographic analysis suggests that the growth in the overall labor force will slow. Moreover, we are no longer getting the boost in the labor force from a growing number of women entering the work force, and we also have somewhat lower fertility rates. For all these reasons, labor force growth will slow in the coming years unless it is offset by increased immigration. Barring a boom in immigrants, even if productivity remains strong, the trend growth rate of the economy is likely to moderate.

Source.

(h/t: John Miller.)

I was talking to some athletics boosters today; I asked them if they thought one reason we could not keep the NCC together might be because UND is unhappy with SCSU's persistence on this issue. The booster could only roll his eyes.

The St. Cloud Times leads with a letter from Abbas Mehdi, a sociology professor here and an Iraqi, who is currently working in Baghdad for a contractor for the US government helping to rebuild his home country. I know Abbas, and am happy that he sent me a copy of the letter. The article is accurate in its reflection of the letter's contents. Abbas has said to friends that the place is much worse than he imagined. Here's the bulk of it:

There is no government, there are no institutions, no security, no jobs, no water, and no electricity.

Even worse than that, I don't see any solution in the near future. Of the many possible options I hear about, none seems to me to provide the answer, not even the Baker report, which I know is attracting a lot of attention right now in the US.

The reality for both the US and Iraq is very grim. If the US leaves, it will make the situation here worse very quickly; but if the US stays, it will become worse very slowly. In the meantime, ethnic killing has started to spread widely among different communities in Baghdad.

If you ask me what I think the answer is, I have to say I simply don't know, and I don’t know if anyone else really knows, either.

Iraq’s future is in serious doubt and it's moving toward one of the darkest chapters in its history. Iraq has been destroyed as a result of stupidity and policies that were rushed through too fast, and it may be a very long time until the damage can be repaired.

You might expect me to disagree with the letter, but I cannot. No plan currently put forward sounds reasonably like something that would work; I agree that the plan initiated by Paul Bremer immediately after taking Baghdad was a complete disaster and made matters worse not better. What I would disagree with is the reflection on the letter by another faculty member here.

As he read Mehdi's letter, Philion was reminded of a newspaper article he had read recently about a Marine commander who had been sent to Iraq to train Iraqi police units to do the most basic policing. That commander told a reporter that the mission now was just to make sure the soldiers in their unit made it home alive.

The first job of any commander is to keep his or her own troops alive (I'm reminded of the scene in the beginning of Patton, where George C Scott says nobody helps his country by dying for it, he helps by making the other poor bastard die for his.) But as Captain Ed noted last week, perhaps the goal is about more than just making the other poor bastards die.

The reason why the US insisted on engaging in the Wilsonian task of nation-building after toppling Saddam was twofold. Democracy should allow more rational outlets for political aspirations instead of allowing them to fester in tyranny, thus eventually reducing the impulse towards terrorism. The second follows from the first, and that was to seed Southwest Asia and North Africa with democracy, with its roots in Iraq.

If the goal is Wilsonian nation-building, it had to be said from the start that 1) it's not worked well in many other places, 2) we don't know why it worked in the places it did, and 3) those who supported the idea are not doing a good job explaining why it's not working. The last is why good men like Abbas are now despairing.

The faculty member's comment is part of the argument that everyone wants to cut and run phased redeploy in Iraq, just that some people want to shoot the natives on the way out and others just want to bug out. Abbas closes his letter saying "I so much wish I could be writing to you with hope and optimism and a sense of better things to come." It is up to those who still support the effort in Iraq to provide that sense.

UPDATE (10pm): Of course, Dale is correct in comments that it's not the military leader's job to keep every last soldier alive if it means the mission is not accomplished. But if I have figured out what the faculty member was referring to, it was a story on Iraqi police training and keeping those trainees alive. I of course could be wrong and he was talking of a different article. I don't know, but this is the only one I could find with Google and two weeks worth of news. If that is the article, I'm not convinced that the imperatives of a military commander and a police commander are identical.

A writer in the Hibbing Daily Tribune picks up the story on St. Cloud as the worst place to live. He also finds some object lessons for the Range.

I’ve been to St. Cloud twice. To be fair, I’d describe the ratio of fat people to non-fat people as “normal.” My main impression was that, for a mid-sized regional center, it was very easy to get lost in St. Cloud. I know it’s a river town but it’s more confusing than St. Paul – which is hard to imagine. I’ve also noticed that, anecdotally, many of the people I knew who attended college in St. Cloud (home of St. Cloud State, St. Ben’s, St. Joe’s and others) end up drinking a lot of alcohol after going there. Heck, my first beer – consumed at age 18 – was in St. Cloud. Maybe that’s not the town’s fault, but it’s an awfully big coincidence.

I've noticed as well that we have confusing roads. It's both a river town and a rail depot. It's the railroad that's confusing -- it cuts diagonally through the western part of town and can only be crossed in a few places that don't conflict with the station or other loading areas. I remember being in my car my first year here, looking across 9th Ave N at the downtown post office, unable to get there unless I drove over the tracks, and unable to figure out how to get the heck out of where I was.

As to drinking, well, it's a Stearns County thing. Or at least that's the lore of the place.

...I do recall that the town had an extended suburban feel to it. A number of St. Cloud residents work in or near the Twin Cities now, and as such the town has begun to show a homogenized “just off the Interstate” look.

True enough, as I mentioned once here, the town looks increasingly like Maple Grove, and I don't mean that in a good way.

I hope this serves as a lesson for our local towns. I’ve noticed how excited people have been getting about the retail development in Hibbing, Virginia and Grand Rapids. It’s nice to have chain restaurants and home improvement stores. They provide jobs and economic growth. But suburban-style retail sprawl at the edge of your town doesn’t necessarily make it a good place to live. You’ve got to have a spark of originality and culture … something I think we’ve got here on the Iron Range. Don’t throw that all away so you can get a TJ Maxx. Trust me. TJ Maxx isn’t that great.

On the other hand, what's so great about a mom-and-pop store that has styles from the 1970s? Here's the issue as I've seen it here: About 3000 workers leave the City of St. Cloud every day for jobs in the Cities. Add on the suburbs and it might be 5000, out of an area workforce of around 100,000. They are typically somewhat affluent since the jobs they commute to have to pay enough to warrant the transportation costs. (Economists will recognize that story as the old Alchian and Allen 'shipping the good apples out' story. It's one reason wages are lower in St. Cloud.) What are they looking for when they are in St. Cloud on the weekend? They are looking for something that reminds them of where they spend fifty waking hours out of a week's 168 total hours. Why wouldn't they look for a version of their Cities experience in St. Cloud? The chain stores and chain restaurants know this, and so they go. Commuting workers are not going to invest time to learn about local businesses with local names.

There was a story in the newspaper last Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, about people who shop on the internet. Of course they shop there -- it's what they know. One business owner told me later he was miffed at the paper. "We advertise in the local paper, and they write a story about how to avoid shopping in our stores?" Sorry, but the stores they shop in already aren't yours, any more.

I should start by outing myself: I'm fat. Not heavy-set or big-boned. I've got a pretty good-sized gut on me. Got it in grad school, lost it while running and converting to vegetarianism, and then got it back when vegetarianism was found compatible with beer, popcorn and a mushroom-and-green-olive pizza and the knees gave out. (For those of you who say "swim!" I say, I hate swimming. Same 50 yards, over and over, and can't listen to Doves to kill the boredom. And I'd rather have a breathing tube than share a shower with strangers.)

So it turns out people are studying me. I'm delighted. Except it appears that the studies are mostly about women who are, um, horizontally challenged, and don't like being told that additional pounds will reduce longevity. Big Arm Woman speaks for me by observing:

I have reached critical ennui with the whole "omgwtfbbq women should/shouldn't work/have kids/write vagina monologues/vote a certain way" debate, because it dawns on me that the debate isn't really about women anymore so much as it's about the fact that we all think happiness is a fundamental right, and one that we shouldn't have to work or sacrifice for.

We live in a world that is tragic, that makes us choose between eating food that tastes good and a 34 waist (at least in my case, the only diet that works is simply stated as "if it tastes good, spit it out." Or as my uncle used to say, "what you need is a few less push ups and a few more push aways.) These are the choices faced since God sent Man packing from Eden.

And to think people say apples are health food.

Thanks to Candace de Russy for the link.

This story is a little weird. A student at an art institute gets into a conversation during a class with another student; the class is wrapping up and students are killing time until the rest of the class is done and they are dismissed. One is said to have stated her belief in energy layers and astral beings. The second, who says he is atheist, asks if the first student believes in leprechauns too. She does. The second student, in his own words, says he tried "to convince her not to insist that [her views] were scientifically proven." She files a complaint to the teacher.

That evening, the second student is called before two deans and an associate dean and suspended until there is a hearing. The student then finds an eyewitness and tries to bring the witness to the associate dean, but that is found to be rude and belligerent behavior, according to the suspended student. Subsequently, the dean of students expels this young man; the student feels the dean focused more on his attempt to bring forward an eyewitness than the original case, and starts to seek legal advice on whether he can claim he's been discriminated against because he's an atheist. He says the dean told him atheists were not a protected class.

When I read stories like this, my temptation is to go to the university's catalog and figure out the policy and the process for complaints. Here's theirs. Start at page 79. On the next page we find:

Verbal abuse, insulting comments and gestures, and other harassing conduct are also forbidden under this policy when directed at an individual because of his or her race, color, sex, sexual orientation, familial status, age, religion, ethnic origin, or disability. It is the responsibility of each employee and each student to conduct himself or herself in a professional manner at all times and to refrain from such harassment.

So is belief in astral planes and leprechauns protected under this policy? Or did the student violate something else? Or, as the article indicated, was this a problem student who they were seeking a way to get rid of? Given they have registered this project, should this be permitted at a private educational institution?

I bet he doesn't butt into conversations again any time soon.

Joe Malchow and Scott Johnson have been covering a twist in the UND Fighting Sioux story. Dartmouth College, of which the Powerguys are alums (and I believe Joe is still a student there) has apologized for scheduling UND to a hockey tournament. The scheduling was done two years ago, and only now does it dawn on the college to check out the team's mascot. In a Manchester Union Leader piece about the school's apology is an observation by a UND official:

Don Kojich, executive associate vice president for university relations at North Dakota, referred all questions to the state's attorney general, but did say that he has never heard of another school publicly apologizing for playing the Fighting Sioux.

Hello? I assume the meager readership of this blog does not include the upper administration of UND, but I'd hope someone was aware of the coverage we've given this issue. This school not only has apologized for playing the Sioux -- if in no other way than helping with the organization of the protestors when UND comes here for hockey and football (though the latter will not be a problem when North Dakota goes to D-1 for all sports while we play the Little Sisters of the Poor) -- it has been home of the university president singly responsible for the mascot issue becoming part of the national debate. Indeed, Dartmouth's president has adopted our president's own words.

Scott's co-blogger Paul Mirengoff thinks there are behaviors that are demeaning to Native Americans in the usual rivalry-stoked insults hurled between contesting universities. Paul thinks it's backlash to the PC-induced censorship Saigo's policies have helped create. Perhaps -- if it's OK to go to a Penn party dressed as a suicide bomber but not have a cowboy-and-Indian fundraiser, you have a case there. But the desire to regulate mascots wasn't present unless and until the mascot becomes a representation of a victim group.

Speaking of which, the Irish sure played like famine victims last weekend.

While attending a conference in Boston last weekend, we strolled through an old section of town, a quaint neighborhood of magnificent row houses, brick sidewalks, cobblestone driveways, gas lights. For those unfamiliar with this area, it is called Beacon Hill, the bastian of Boston Brahmans, home of the blue, groupthink rich. Then we noticed something else – a preponderance of non-American cars. These owners are the same people who outwardly scream against Wal-Mart, claim they’re against moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico, espouse support for labor unions, etc. Our conclusion? Their practice of “I tell you what to think; I’ll do what I want to do”, is, classic “limousine liberal leftist logic”. (or illogic?)

I have been very busy with real life lately, and I haven't posted some of the things I've wanted to. But I am thankful that I am busy. I work with the greatest economics department one could have, even for the one guy who thinks I'm a jerk. I'm thankful for the wonderful students who came by for advising and deciding that economics was what they wanted to study for their degrees. That's a gift and an awesome responsibility -- I'm glad to have 19 colleagues who share that with me.

I reserve an hour in the morning, after Littlest is dropped at school, for time with some friends over coffee. A restauranteur -- a Connector in the Gladwellian sense if there ever was one -- introduced me one day at his shop and the next thing you know, I have eight new friends. The group has mostly kept together even after the bagel place closed (it's still a vacant storefront, last time I looked) and the biggest loss is the Connector, who is always there in spirit.

While my church closed I have managed to keep in contact with most of my fellow worshippers, and I'm out singing with them two Sundays next month. That also keeps me nearer Mrs. S, the pianist, for whom no thanks is ever enough.

I'm thankful for this blog and the friends, the NARN, the MOB, a chance to relive radio memories, to have co-authors like Janet (and from the past Jack and Dave and Kevin and Jim and Marie and I'm sure I've forgotten someone), Scholars all.

I'm thankful that I learned to keep busy from my parents. They called me last Sunday afternoon with the sound of the surf in the background. Walking on the beach towards a hotel that had pie. My dad's had a six-pack of heart attacks in the last twenty years, so every day is good as long as he draws a breath. But he knows busy means, in Satchel Paige's phrasing, nothing is gaining on him. Rust never sleeps.

Thankfully, I'm keeping one step ahead of the rust.

Have a fine weekend, thanks for reading. I'll be back Monday.

The United States is the only nation on the planet that sets aside a day to give thanks. The first Thanksgiving was a "thank you" to God. Today, though, much of the political climate does not want to admit this but we are a nation founded on basic Judeo-Christian ideals. (Note, ideals, not necessarily practices all the time.) Regardless, we still continue to celebrate our unique holiday.

Lest we forget, if our ideals disappear, the planet will revert to a far more savage place. Many of you won't want to hear this because you have been taught for the last 40 plus years that we are the "bad guys" and that we cause all the problems in the world. This belief is simply wrong. True, there are wars going on in many places but the percentage of people, across all races, creeds, etc. who have the opportunity to improve their standard of living, their education, has never been greater. In the past 60 years, more have experienced prosperity than have ever experienced it in the history of the human race.

Why is this so? A main reason is because the United States, a gigantic power, has chosen to use its influence to help stabalize the world, not rule it. If our economic system dominates, that is because it is the best designed so far that successfully benefits the most people.

So, this Thanksgiving Day, I wish all of you, your family and friends laughter, fun, good health, a delicious meal. I also hope with all my heart that you will take the time to thank our Creator (or whatever name you choose to use) for the privilege of living in a nation with standards that are desired by so many in the rest of the world. We are the shining light.

We have reason to be grateful, we really do.

The Chronicle News blog says the Pennsylvania legislative report ended up not finding any issues with student academic freedom. David Horowitz points out, however, that two universities -- Temple and Penn State --

have now adopted "student-specific" bills of rights (the words "student-specific" were excised from the report by commissar Lynn Herman in a cya operation for the Penn State administration. This is a major victory.and no amount of lying by the AFT and its journalistic shills is going to change that. The two reforms which we achieved at Temple and Penn State made up the original Appendix C of the report. The fact that Lynn Herman deleted them in the report does not change the fact they now exist in the regulations of Temple and Penn.

The Temple policy is here, and this is one page explaining Penn State's. Both indeed were enacted this past summer, after the Penn legislative hearings.

Two members of ISAIAH, a left-wing religious group in the Twin Cities (that works with a local group in St. Cloud as well) have launched a tirade against Ford's use of the land on which its closing plant in St. Paul sit. Ford would move it from a use for which it wastes resources -- the value of the cars built on the property were insufficient to pay for the resources used to build the cars -- to a use that will make someone money. It might be worth more when public infrastructure is built up to provide better roads around the property. By accepting the delay in receiving monies from the sale of land, the Ford owners keep the land available for possibly more productive use later. That will not do, say the ISAIAH writers, who wish to expropriate the land. Their fundamental misunderstanding of economics comes in a steady buildup to this concluding paragraph:

The value of land is created not by individuals, but by the growth in population and wealth of the surrounding community and by the community's investments in public services and infrastructure. Land value taxation recaptures community-created value for the needs of the community while providing an incentive to put sites to their highest and best use. With the right incentives in place, we won't have to worry so much about how long it will take for the site of the next closed manufacturing plant to come back to life.

Dave Downing (who brought this article to my attention) refers to these people as American Taliban Communist but the Taliban or American parts aren't needed. Marx' letter to Engels in 1851 argued that

Every payment of rent for the use of a piece of real estate will make the farmer part-proprietor of it and will count as a mortgage payment by him. When the property has been entirely paid for it will be immediately taken over by the commune, which will take the place of the former owner and will share with the farmer the ownership and the net product.

Is there any difference between that and ISAIAH's call for "land value taxation"?

Hostility to speculators is a common Marxist theme -- and their close cousins.

I'm glad I don't have to explain government forecasts (had a small bit of this in Ukraine a decade ago), because I don't think I could have made this statement with the Administration's latest economic forecast.

“The combination of lower energy prices, a tight labor market, and strong underlying fundamentals is producing a solid economy for America’s workers,” said Edward P. Lazear, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. In the past year, hourly wages have increased 2.8 percent after adjusting for inflation, which is well above the historical average and amounts to about $960 for a full-time production worker. We expect real wage growth to continue.”

The Administration releases an economic forecast twice a year. The new economic forecast – which will be used for the President’s Fiscal Year 2008 budget – is similar to the consensus of professional economic forecasters and the Administration’s past forecasts.

"The economic forecast clearly reflects the fact that the U.S. economy is moderating to more sustainable growth levels, firmer labor markets and steady inflation rates. As we continue working toward pro-growth polices in the areas of retirement and energy security as well as worker competitiveness, we will achieve long-term U.S. economic strength, which will improve the standards of living for future generations of Americans," said Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.

...The forecast shows a strong labor market with both the unemployment rate and monthly payroll job growth slightly lower than previously projected. Last month the unemployment rate dropped to the lowest rate in over five years, and it currently stands at 4.4 percent. The lower-than-expected unemployment rate has reduced the projected annual average to just 4.6 percent in 2006 and 2007. The new forecast projects payroll growth to average 129,000 jobs per month next year.

The previous averages were 175k in 2004, 165k in 2005, and 164k for the last twelve months to October 2006. 129k is a pretty significant downshift, and it requires something a little more deep than what is in that report.

I think we should take Edward Hugh's comments very seriously about the demographics: If labor growth in America is due to growth in the number of Hispanic workers, their birth rates declining would be a troubling sign. I looked up the data for the last three years of civilian labor force by race.

White 0.7% per year
Black 1.3%
Hispanic and Latino 3.2%

White workers are about 75% of the population, with blacks and Hispanic/Latino about even for the rest. Hispanic and Latino workers are disproportionately in the building trades, so the recent housing slump likely has harmed them more than other ethnic groups.

I guess you have to take your wife. Wish Mrs. would fly. I'm probably in LA twice a year, never got a sniff.

Still not enough to get me to root for USC.

UPDATE: 6:15 -- I get love, after Ed mentions I am the only academic blog needed (responding to this disturbing development.)

As university admissions offices continue to reduce their reliance on standardized tests out of concern for racial balance, the availability of alternative mechanisms for allocating scarce seats at selective colleges and universities is declining. One of four applicants to Harvard with a 2400 SAT score are turned down. High school grades are growing less useful.

Extra credit for AP courses, parental lobbying and genuine hard work by the most competitive students have combined to shatter any semblance of a Bell curve, one in which 'A's are reserved only for the very best. For example, of the 47,317 applications the University of California, Los Angeles, received for this fall's freshman class, nearly 21,000 had GPAs of 4.0 or above.

That's also making it harder for the most selective colleges -- who often call grades the single most important factor in admissions -- to join in a growing movement to lessen the influence of standardized tests.

"We're seeing 30, 40 valedictorians at a high school because they don't want to create these distinctions between students," said Jess Lord, dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. "If we don't have enough information, there's a chance we'll become more heavily reliant on test scores, and that's a real negative to me."

As a result, colleges are relying more on aptitude tests than ever.

"It's the only thing we have to evaluate students that will help us" tell how they compare to each other, said Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania. ...

The average high school GPA increased from 2.68 to 2.94 between 1990 and 2000, according to a federal study. Almost 23 percent of college freshmen in 2005 reported their average grade in high school was an A or better, according to a national survey by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. In 1975, the percentage was about half that.

GPAs reported by students on surveys when they take the SAT and ACT exams have also risen -- and faster than their scores on those tests. That suggests their classroom grades aren't rising just because students are getting smarter. Not surprisingly, the test-owners say grade inflation shows why testing should be kept: It gives all students an equal chance to shine.

In Georgia, where the HOPE scholarship program provides public tuition subsidies to students who graduate achieve a 3.0 GPA, high school grades have risen. Not so, it appears, at Edina High in Minnesota, where the average student's SAT score is 1170. (Worth noting, however, is that only those students planning on applying nationwide will take the SAT, as the ACT is more prevalent at Midwest schools. Not the best of statistics there.) Class ranks are given, but these too are subject to manipulation by taking the courses with bonus GPA points. Besides, there are 36,000 HS graduates ranked #1 in their schools. They can't all go to Ivy League schools; Penn and Duke turned down 60% of valedictorians who applied.

If it all comes down to the admissions essay, who can afford the coaches and counselors who help write the best ones? Doesn't it seem like the dog is still chasing its own tail?

As students and legislators continue to press for a reduction in textbook costs, some faculty are resorting to using free resources on the internet. I do this for my intro course, using online copies of classics rather than asking students to buy them. Where I have choices, a free internet resource is preferred to a hardcover book for $35. Textbooks are a different matter to me at least, but I guess not to others. And publishers are pretty darned mad.

Book publishers say professors who post long excerpts of protected texts on the Internet without permission cost the industry at least $20 million a year. Cornell University, the Ivy League college in Ithaca, N.Y., agreed in September to regulate work its faculty puts on the Web, in response to a threatened lawsuit from the Association of American Publishers.

Professors are making material available free rather than requiring students to buy $100 textbooks. While faculty members from Harvard University to the University of Pennsylvania complain of a restricted flow of ideas, publishers say they must protect $3.35 billion in annual U.S. college textbook sales.

"We can't compete with free," says Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs with the Washington-based publishers group, whose members include McGraw-Hill Cos. and Pearson Plc.

I would bet there will be a day soon where someone defines for universities more clearly than present what constitutes "fair use".

Loyal reader JW sent along an article last week on the use of the virtual world 'Second Life' in teaching. Along with businesses, Harvard University has a class taught online there, and one online campus has been built into it. Here's a discussion held by teachers about how they use online environments. The use of Second Life for campus learning has been around for awhile. (The original press release.)

I was visiting with some people this morning during my usual breakfast and talked about this. We wonder whether experimental economics is using these controlled virtual worlds to test economic theory. Indeed they have. The economy is even being measured.

Worth thinking about: Building an economics course -- with a lab -- in a virtual world.

I started reading a humorousstudent newspaper opinion piece about a gym that had called the police on a weightlifter who grunted while lifting. I got to about here...

And this is where I look and think at how incredibly lame and pathetic our country is becoming. I mean, I'm no meat head and I really don't take kindly to your run of the mill, beefy, brainless, cell-tech inhaling, weight lifting swine, but I do have the simple understanding that sometimes, when you're doing something strenuous-like lifting 500 lbs. on your shoulders up and down by bending only your knees, your body will often times let out some heavy breathing and sometimes (God forbid), a grunt.

...and I think heck, this kid isn't all that bad. A little overwrought, but his liberty-loving tendencies are appealing.

But then...

In reality, this rule is in place to take away every last freedom we have. What's next, no sweating in basketball? The police get called if a baby cries in public? I can see this extending to just about anything that will strip us of any basic right.

And I think "whoops! Looks like Andy has just stepped on the slippery slope argument." And then,

If grunting in a gym is so wrong, then why isn't lying to a nation about going to war?

It would be, except that nobody did that.

More than worrying about an anti-grunting rule, I'd worry about a student who thought his job as a columnist was to wonder how he could take any offbeat news story and turn it into a discredited leftist trope.

? Mitch's note on Captain Ed "surprising" the First Mate by renting a convertible on their trip to LA (this will be helpful to dry the tears after his Irish get waxed by USC Saturday) reminds me of a friend's tale. He had dated and eventually moved in with a woman, one of those stately females who exude class from every pore. He definitely was "dating up". He, a fellow grad student, did not own a car and rode a bike everywhere. He also is a classic endomorph, so seeing him on a bike was always a bit humorous anyway. So what does he get her for Christmas?

A bike rack for her car.

She did not own a bike.

She moved out before Valentine's Day.

I'm not sayin', Ed, I'm just sayin'.

John Fund notes how the pro-affirimative action activists in Michigan are railing against Proposition 2's passage there.

Mary Sue Coleman is president of the University of Michigan, which has already spent millions of taxpayers' dollars defending its racial preferences in courts. She addressed what Tom Bray of the Detroit News called "a howling mob of hundreds of student and faculty protestors" last week. "Diversity matters at Michigan," she declared. "It matters today, and it will matter tomorrow." Echoes of George Wallace, who in 1963 declared from the steps of Alabama's Capitol: "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Ms. Coleman isn't the only Michigan official to employ Wallace-style rhetoric against MCRI. Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick told a fundraiser last April that the measure would usher in an era of racial prejudice. "Bring it on!" he bellowed. "We will affirm to the world that affirmative action will be here today, it will be here tomorrow, and there will be affirmative action in the state forever."

Later in the artile we read of attempts to intimidate voters and canvassers who had to certify placing the initiative on the ballot.

John Rosenberg highlights an article by Scott Gerber discussing the use of initiative and referendum as "popular constitutionalism". Gerber writes,

I became interested in learning how proponents of popular constitutionalism felt about Prop 2 after a colleague posted on ConLawProf, a professional internet discussion list to which I subscribe (geared to constitutional law professors, as its name suggests), that a lawsuit had been filed by a pro-affirmative action group called “By Any Means Necessary,” or “BAMN” for short, requesting that a court invalidate the November 7 decision by the people of Michigan. On the one hand, Prop 2 is precisely what popular constitutionalists had envisioned: the people of Michigan had defined what the state’s constitution means. On the other hand, most popular constitutionalists are on the political Left and are very strong supporters of affirmative action.

While the Left may like popular constitutionalism in many places, it fights very hard for maintaining judicial review as a means of keeping power in the hands of the state. It battles ceaselessly and 'by any means necessary' to keep amendments in check, to use the courts to invalidate electoral results, etc. It did so with Proposition 187 in California 12 years ago, and has followed that method ever since.

My previous three posts on this topic can be accessed at 6 x 7 = ?, 6 x 7, round two, and 6 x 7, round three. This final post addresses the attitudes of teachers and parents - one that, in my experience, does not bode well for our children.

The first disturbing quote in the NYT article on math scores was made by a sixth grade teacher who said, "We don't teach long division; it stifles creativity." Give me a break. If students get through sixth grade without learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, basic word problems and basic algebraic expressions, they are in a pile of hurt. It is the teacher's job to teach these functions.

This reminded me of a co-worker's story from a few years ago. She hated anything to do with math. When I asked her how strong her fifth grade teacher was in math, her response was that the teacher didn't like math and didn't teach them. No wonder she had a math phobia.

Elsewhere in the article a parent says, "Honey, don't worry, I never could do math either". Hello. As the article states, math is a family occupation in Asian communities.

Teachers who use the excuse of "stifling creativity" are copping out on their responsibilities. Either they don't know the math or are too lazy to teach it. They give students As, parents think everything is ok, the student gets a false sense of what is required. Knowing math facts increases self-confidence. Teachers who don't or won't teach it are being unfair to students, parents, taxpayers, etc.

Perhaps we've had it too good for too long and have become too lazy. Learning math facts is not just training one's brain, it is also a key to success in a global environment. We are cheating our children and future by making excuses for students not learning math.

As discusssed in my two previous posts 6 x 7 = ? and 6 x 7, round two, I used timed tests to improve standardized test scores. In addition, students began to transfer their increased confidence in math to success in other areas.

Individual students experienced significant changes - I'll share three. The first student, Peter, had gone through elementary school half-asleep. He had zero energy. His parents had him tested and "nothing was wrong". He was a nice kid, but lethargic was the only way to describe his mannerisms. He was slow doing everything, rarely finished any assignment on time, and took much work home. Then we started the timed tests. I don't recall how long it took him to complete the 50 facts in the three minute time limit but I do remember the megawatt grin on his face when he finally did. He literally started walking taller. The rest of his work got completed more quickly. By spring, his parents came to conference and asked, "What happened?" It was as though his brain had broken through a barrier of some sort and he could now perform like the other students.

A very, very bright student also experienced a shift. Jim was bored with school but because he was smart, he had few academic problems, though he had not learned his facts, either. He did ok in math but carelessness affected his results. He was tested for the gifted program; his score was borderline so he was denied participation. What the psychologist refused to consider was that Jim had made a disproportionate number of factual mistakes on the test, errors that were easily fixable. Nevertheless, she refused him access. He started the timed tests, and yes, his factual knowledge improved significantly. Though he did not get reconsidered for gifted classes at that time, his overall attitude towards school became more positive.

Tina, another student in the class had an attitude towards math that fit all the stereotypes. She was incredibly creative in writing, art, poetry, etc. but she "hated" math and often suffered an anxiety attack when taking math tests. After a few weeks taking timed tests, her fear of math started to subside. In the spring, when she took the standardized test, she became aware that her answers were out of synch with the questions. Instead of panicking, she stopped, took a deep breath, methodically retraced her answers and questions, found the problem where she had erred and still completed the entire section.

These three students along with the others had learned to exercise their brain. Just as a dancer or athlete or musician must exercise and practice, we must also teach students that they need to practice and exercise the mental muscle, the brain - learning basic math facts is simply a way to train one's brain.

Most of my friends know I'm nuts about baseball and about sabermetrics. My morning internet tour almost always includes Baseball Prospectus. But when I read Joe Sheehan talking about the Red Sox pursuit of Daisuke Matsuzaka, I was a little disappointed.

Next paragraph is background for those unfamiliar, you can skip if you know the story:
Matsuzaka is a pitcher with the Seibu Lions in the Japan League. He currently makes about $3 million a year as arguably the best pitcher in the JL. He is still bound by contract to Seibu for the next two seasons, but Japanese teams can offer their players to the US major leagues by posting them to Major League Baseball. Each team makes a sealed bid; the highest bid grants the team the exclusive right to negotiate for thirty days with the player on a contract. If the team and player fail to negotiate a contract, the player returns to Japan.

The Red Sox -- my team -- won the bidding on Matsuzaka for the princely sum of $51.1 million, and are now negotiating. Sheehan is trying to figure out how much the contract between Boston and Matsuzaka will be:

Matsuzaka is exactly what the Sox need, a top-of-the-rotation starter. If the $51 million is treated as a sunk cost, which it should be, the Sox should evaluate Matsuzaka as roughly equivalent to Roy Oswalt, who signed with the Astros for five years and $73 million. (Note: Many, many people have pointed out that this is wrong, because the money has not yet been paid, and will not be paid in the event the Sox do not sign Matsuzaka. I was trying to make the point that the posting fee is disconnected, from Matsuzaka's standpoint, from his negotiations. "Sunk cost" was the wrong term to use. My apologies, and my thanks for the feedback.--JSS)

I hate to tell you this, Joe, but you still missed the point. What the Red Sox bought is the right to be part of a bilateral monopoly. Matsuzaka has an opportunity cost of $3 million, the amount he could make in Japan ... plus the opportunity to come out again next year for posting, or wait two years and be an unrestricted free agent (in which case he has everyone bidding, and can get closer to a monopoly price.) That defines his reservation price, the wage below which he will decline the offer and return to Japan. The Red Sox will pay no more than the value of his marginal product in creating revenues for the team by helping them win another World Series. ("Another" -- that still feels good, man!) What Sheehan continues to offer in terms of comparable wages are close to monopoly wages, by focusing on the salaries given to free agents. Matsuzaka is not getting that wage from the Red Sox because he cannot get any other MLB teams to bid on his services.

Sheehan is right that the presence of an agent for Matsuzaka makes it more likely that the player and team will come to an agreement. But perversely, that is to the benefit of the team, not the player; it is analogous to the real estate agent story that Levitt and Dubner tell in Freakonomics (here's a version of it from Wired last year.) Understanding those incentives may be one reason why the Red Sox paid such a high price just to sit and visit with a 26-year-old pitcher.

It's been a day for me to look at statistics in the colleges. Most of them would be boring, but I found this one via Phi Beta Cons,

Of students who entered [California] community colleges in 1997, half left after a year, said Ria Sengupta, the report's co-author. About a quarter of students who enter with the intention of transferring to a four-year school actually did that, and only one in 10 who took classes needed for transferring earned a two-year associate's degree.

``We were surprised the most by the high turnover rate,'' Sengupta said. ``The majority of students leave without transferring.''

Educators long have struggled to serve the variety of students who have turned California community colleges into the nation's largest higher-education system. While the schools traditionally are associated with recent high-school graduates who use them as stepping stones to four-year colleges, fewer than half the first-year students in 2003 took primarily transfer-oriented courses.

Other students took vocational classes such as dental assisting or electrical technology, while some focused on non-credit courses such as cooking or traffic school. About 14 percent took mostly remedial classes or English courses for non-native speakers.

It does make you wonder, as Joanne Jacobs does, why donors might fund these colleges more than in the past. Doesn't there need to be some focus to this?

During the last elections the gubernatorial candidates sparred over the cost of college education. But the cost of college is a function of the preparation one receives in K-12 education; if less than half of students stay in the community college system more than a year, how much of the cost of college education should be charged to area school systems? I agree with Richard Vedder that we are perhaps oversubsidizing students who spend probably no more than 30 hours per week as students, but like a pitcher suddenly put on a four-day rotation, more studying and class time may be something they are not prepared for.

This is still one of my favorite government reports. I know, what an exciting life!

From December 2005 to March 2006, the number of job gains from opening and expanding private sector establishments was 7.6 million, and the number of job losses from closing and contracting establishments was 6.8 million, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. Gross job gains exceeded gross job losses in all sectors, except manufacturing, information, and utilities. Firms with 20 to 49 employees accounted for 18.9 percent of the net gains in employment, representing the largest contribution to employment growth among all firm size classes.

It is worth noting that manufacturing continues to shrink, with a net job loss of 4000 that quarter. The information sector had a net loss of 3000. Almost a quarter of the net gain of 616,000 in service-providing jobs were in the leisure and hospitality sector.

The front page of this morning's paper tells us we have made some list that calls St. Cloud one of the absolutely worst places to live in America.

The St. Cloud area is nationally known for its granite, higher education institutions and, more recently, for its "buffet grazers." ...according to author Dave Gilmartin.

His tongue-in-cheek book, released last month, pokes fun at St. Cloud as being ideal habitat for "dazed and ill-prepared college students," "mall rats" and "obese buffet grazers."

"If its endless below-zero winter doesn't kill you, its soul-killing culture of sheer hopelessness surely will," Gilmartin writes in "The Absolutely Worst Places to Live in America."

It also has "quite possibly the most number of Arby's per capita." The St. Cloud area has three Arby's restaurants.

So where does Mr. Gilmartin live?

New Jersey.

Pot(belly), meet kettle.

The Queen of the Lakes for the Aquatennial gets called up to active duty to the National Guard to go to Iraq, and becomes a role model.

Gaulke will present her resignation today to the annual meeting of the Aquatennial Ambassador Organization. Though she said being Queen of the Lakes is "a huge honor," she said she is simply honoring the agreement she made when she committed to the Guard before her senior year at Robbinsdale Cooper High School.

"It really wasn't a decision that was mine to be made," said Gaulke, a former Miss Robbinsdale. "My unit's going. I've accepted it. It's part of the whole scope of why I joined; I'll be there for all of us over here."

Her beauty is on the inside as well as the outside.