THE DOWNSIDE OF FIXED FORMATIONS.

At the time Florida's Brightline service launched, offering joy-rides between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm, I noted,  "As far as those commuter-friendly schedules, we'll see how long until those fixed formation train sets become incompatible with peak-load pricing or building ridership."

FRIDAY short TAKES.

It is time to be serious.  "If using the people of Ukraine as cheap disposable pawns to fight a proxy war against Russia and Putin has been the end game from the start, simply admit it. Don’t pretend you are trying to save the people of Ukraine or that nation’s infrastructure."

"Doing something" includes doing nothing.  "Change may be necessary, but change for its own sake is not reason enough. And it certainly isn’t conservative. In short, conservatism is a way of making decisions, which includes deciding to do nothing."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

THE INCREASINGLY FARCICAL ANTI-HERO.

In "America is Creating a Culture Without Heroes," John "Culturcidal" Hawkins offers a long explanation, leading to

Our culture used to be homogenous. Now it’s fractured. We used to put a high value on morality. We no longer do. We used to have a strong sense of right and wrong that was generally shared across our society. Now, a large part of the population has cobbled together their own personal moral code that usually seems to justify whatever they do. We used to believe that it was important that what went up on the Silver Screen should help make people better.

These days, it's more like "I'm OK, all of you are out of step!"

Mr Hawkins is not happy. "The only standard is entertainment, wish fulfillment or in the case of some of the more militant members of the Left, heavy-handed liberal propaganda."

STILL NO EXIT FROM THE GRIM STRATEGY OUTCOME.

Over the weekend, Our President wrote a post on his proprietary "Truth Social" platform that prompted Outside the Beltway contributor Steven Taylor to ask, "A thought for any who might wish to entertain it: if you like this kind of rhetoric and behavior, why? What do you think it says about you? If you ignore it while still supporting Trump, why?"  Thom Hartmann looked for a more general lesson.

When the President of the United States calls members of the oldest political party in the world and a former president “scum,” it’s not just another ugly outburst that embarrasses America before the rest of the world: It’s a warning sign. A bright red flag.

It tells us that something far more sinister than partisan posturing is afoot. Something our media has already decided to overlook in their perpetual effort to normalize the abominable.

This kind of rhetoric isn’t new, and it’s not harmless. History has shown us—again and again—that when political leaders use dehumanizing language to vilify their opponents, they’re in actuality laying the groundwork for authoritarianism, repression, and violence.

Yes, but repression of whom, by whom?  The pass Mr Hartmann finds himself at is one a long time in being reached.  "At the moment, there are plenty of things Democrats have done that call for massive punishment. Bear in mind, dear reader, that Grim Strategy outcomes are outcomes in which both the punisher and the punishee wind up in a worse place than they would be in either the repeated Nash or the cooperative outcome."

THE PROFESSOR'S CALLING IS TO SAY NO AND UPHOLD STANDARDS.

I've used that formulation so many times over the years I feel like applying for a copyright.

The ethos of inclusion and accommodation that prompted more than a few complaints over the years has culminated, notes Minding the Campus contributor Rebekah Wanic, as inevitably it must.  "Higher Ed Has a Discipline Deficit."

MEMORIAL DAY BASE BALL.

The Decoration Day tradition, almost from the beginning, has been to reserve the morning for the prayers, and the speeches, and the volleys and Taps.  Perhaps the tradition of raising the flag to full mast at noon is as if to signal the onset of summer.

Charles Ives's Decoration Day captures the mood shift.

In his setting, all march back to town, and around 1 pm, it's Batter Up.

RECONSTITUTE THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE!

Germany's Panzerbrigade 45 will be stationed in Lithuania, prompting Instapundit regular Ed Driscoll to quip "I'll take 'Headlines from 1941,' Alex."

There's a longer history involved.  Once upon a time, "Captive Nations Week" was a major part of the Cold War, with particular emphasis on Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, press-ganged into the Soviet Union after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact went the way of all totalitarian deals.  The third week of July is still, by an act of Congress, "Captive Nations Week," and former Soviet republics still figure in presidential proclamations.

The Baltic republics are the current political division of an area called Livonia on old maps, a coastal plain that has been contested for centuries, the local tribes' wishes notwithstanding, by Danes, Poles, Prussians, Russians, and Swedes.  "Poland and the Baltic States have permanent interests that transcend Communism: before Stalin there was Alexander I, before Alexander I there was Peter the Great, before Peter the Great ... (where's the Russian history collection when I need it?)"  That is, when they're not fighting the Prussians.  "Poland's King Wladislaw Jagiello, in alliance with Lithuania's Grand Duke Witold, managed to out-maneuver and surround a better-equipped army of Teutonic Knights."

HOT DOGGING.

Red State's Ward Clark put together a column featuring the Indianapolis version of racing sausages.

One Wienermobile dropped out with mechanical problems; to be frank, it looks as though that team could use a new mechanic. Later in the race, though, the Wienermobile from the southeast United States, playing ketchup, took the lead and rolled to the win. The winning team, we can be sure, threw a sausage party after the event. They should be proud; their historic win lands them in the honor roll of American sports. The losers, though, may find themselves in a bit of a pickle.

The heavy wordplay in that paragraph is no worse than the Fox Sports call of the race, which was decided in the final furlong.

Mr Clark also embedded an Oscar Mayer commercial from sixty years ago.  I don't know whether the people who wrote the original "everyone would be in love with me" anticipated the way kids would parody that song, or if they leaned into it, as you'll see in the clip.  Milwaukee elementary school kids of the era were singing that "there would soon be nothing left" verse as early as 1964.

Kids participating in hot dog commercials were a thing during the waning years of the American High.  Armour might have had the more edgy tag line, with "the dog kids love to bite."

Those references to "fat kids" and "sissy kids" bothered Excessively Earnest People of that era.  In the Oscar Mayer reference to "all good meat" might have been a response to rumblings about what went into industrial-scale hot dogs.  (Somewhere in the operations research canon there is a linear programming problem involving snouts and eyeballs, and it's not for the faint of heart, because you might find those in the mix as well.)  And thus the regional variations on artisanal hot dogs, intended as the Arch Deluxe alternative to grilling an Oscar Mayer or an Armour at day camp.

A WISCONSIN TRADITION GOES TO INDIANAPOLIS.

Milwaukee's Brewers have their racing sausages.  The sponsor of the race has changed from time to time, as has the line-up of sausages so racing.

In Indianapolis, the racing sausages have engines.  "The 'Wienie 500' will see six of the hot-dog-shaped promotional vehicles race on the famous oval, each one representing a regional U.S. hot-dog style."

Each Wienermobile will be decked out in a new livery, featuring a colored number and the name of a regional hot-dog favorite. The Midwest will be represented by the Chi Dog, the East will have the New York Dog, while the Southeast features the Slaw Dog. The Chili Dog will represent the South, with the Seattle Dog serving the Northwest and the Sonoran Dog as the entry for the Southwest.

Oscar Mayer is going all-out for its inaugural Wienermobile race, with custom racing suits for the drivers and a trophy presentation in the "Wiener's Circle" that will include a hot dog and a "condiment spray" instead of racing's traditional champagne spraying celebration, or in the case of the Indy 500, the iconic post-race milk-drinking. Oscar Mayer claims that at the Indy 500—which is the biggest single-day sporting event in the world—the over 330,000 spectators consume nearly 30,000 hot dogs.

The race will begin at 1 pm Madison time.  Apparently the people at Oscar Mayer had second thoughts about their renaming of the Wienermobiles as Frankmobiles.  The company frequently recruit their drivers among Wisconsin collegians.

OVERPRICED IDEOLOGICAL PLAYGROUNDS.

Liberal Patriot contributor John Halpin suggests "It’s Easy to Understand Why Universities Have Lost Public Trust."  To an extent, that loss of trust is partisan.

As with other indicators of institutional trust, a noticeable partisan divide has emerged to partially explain the decline in confidence in U.S. colleges and universities. Although trust has declined among nearly all demographic and partisan groups, self-identified Republicans have completely flipped in their sentiments towards higher education over the past decade. Consider that in 2015, 56 percent of Republicans held a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education while only 11 percent held very little or no confidence. By 2024, only one-fifth of Republicans expressed confidence in higher education with half saying they had no confidence—a 75-point shift in the net confidence margin.

There are multiple possible explanations, but the simplest might be "the poo-bahs of higher education have gone all in on sticking metaphorical fingers in the eyes of Normals."  That's surely a sub-text in the Gallup survey Mr Halpin cites.

Gallup asked the roughly one-third of Americans who lack confidence in higher education to describe why they feel this way. Respondents were allowed to give multiple answers, and the responses were categorized into broader categories summarized in the table below. At the top of the list of concerns, more than four in ten respondents cited some aspect of perceived political agendas at work in colleges and universities—ideas including “indoctrination,” “brainwashing,” and “propaganda” or colleges being “too liberal” with “too much concentration on diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

But higher education breaking its obligations under a social contract of long standing, that is, failing at its mission, is part of the complaint, even if the complaint can be decomposed along partisan lines.

Concerns about colleges and universities not fulfilling their core mission to educate young people and provide them with relevant information and skills necessary to succeed in the workplace nearly matched concerns about politicization on campus (37 percent combined). Likewise, a good chunk of Americans who distrust higher education cited high costs and debt as reasons for lacking confidence in these institutions (28 percent combined).

The partisan dimensions are again pertinent in understanding sentiments. As Gallup reported at the time: “A majority of Republicans who lack confidence in higher education, 53 percent, mention political agendas. Democrats who are not confident in higher education primarily cite the cost of it, while independents divide about equally between cost, political agendas, and misplaced teaching focus.”

Maybe rediscovering a respect for what we have already learned might help.  That advice also applies, with greater strength, to the research enterprise.  Robin "Overcoming Bias" Hanson files a report.

If you want to get paid for abstract analysis that is not mainly organized around current cultural or political fights, academia is pretty much the only game in town. So I am quite grateful that academia exists, and has included me.

But I do have a complaint. In most areas of life, activities are typically justifies in some detail in terms of the accepted purpose of that area. E.g., hospitals save lives, businesses serve customers, roads support travel, armies deter fights, and so on. But though the accepted purpose of academic research is to either answer deep important questions, or to help non-academics somehow, academics rarely explicitly justify their work in such terms.

If it's not playing the glass bead game, or pursuing the Latest Big Thing in sponsored research, it might be showing off.

You can also check this yourself by asking individual academics to explain how their work could plausibly contribute to answering deep important questions, or to non-academic value. Most will be surprised by the question, having never been asked, and answer poorly.

Yes, in principle the fashions that drive these choices could themselves be driven by processes that induce fashion to track deep important questions and non-academic value. But I’ve been in academia for four decades now and I just don’t see this. Changes to academic fashion, like other fashion, instead mostly results from individuals competing to gain their usual selfish rewards.

Maybe that's what I was doing wrong, as (on the rare occasion when such a question came up) I always had a response either on the depth or the "non-academic" (read: "real world?") use of my work.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Government must do something.  This is something.  "Markets thrive on predictable rules and organic adaptation, not capricious, whipsaw meddling from politicians.  Businesses facing White House micromanagement will respond with risk aversion and curtailed investment, undermining the very economic dynamism Trump claims to champion.  The American conservative tradition properly recognizes that prosperity emerges not from top-down directives but from establishing conditions where individuals can pursue their ambitions. True flourishing, then, requires humility about our predictive powers—a quality conspicuously absent in this administration’s current economic approach."

Bet on emergence.  "The lesson here isn’t that we should fight harder to protect Essential Air Service.  It’s that we should have built a town that didn’t need it.  Strong towns are resilient.  They don’t bet everything on federal money and fragile systems.  They grow from the bottom up, incrementally, with a feedback loop between public investment and community value.  They don’t build for prestige.  They build for people."

True patriot love.  “My country, right or wrong — when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right.”

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS ARE JOBS PROGRAMS FOR CONNECTED CONSULTANTS.

Charles Marohn wrote a column in January 2024 explaining exactly that.

You and your neighbors are likely wondering: why this project? Of all the things that need to be done, how did this project end up as the one we have devoted time, energy, and resources to?

In an ideal situation, the project is the culmination of a bottom-up process that begins with an urgent community need. People are struggling with one or more aspects of how the city has been built. That struggle was recognized, many incremental changes were tried, some successfully improving the situation and some less so. Over time, an approach that worked was discerned, tested, and affirmed. The big infrastructure project is the next step in that cycle.

That’s an ideal situation. It rarely works that way. Instead, large allocations of state and federal funding nudge local actors to realign their priorities. How do we come up with a project that qualifies for that funding? With the hammer of a large budget, every local priority needs to look like a nail.

A handful of people make a decision far upstream of any real public engagement. That decision—to pursue the funding available for a large project—shapes the internal structure and focus of local governments and limits the options our elected officials are given to consider. 

If you’re frustrated that your community can get $58 million for an overpass on the edge of town, but can’t seem to get a simple crosswalk painted, you’re not alone. Read on.

At the time he wrote the column, Tim Walz was Minnesota governor and concentrating on buying votes in the state, as his brush with national politics was still a few Biden brain freezes away.  A Trump presidency and the defunding of the process worship was at the time a theoretical possibility.

THE LIBERTARIANS WOULD LOVE TO GARNER NINE PERCENT.

Our President dressed down the visiting president of South Africa for what might have been a call for ethnic cleansing in South Africa and Brett Wilkins, of (who else?) Common Dreams didn't like it.

The U.S. president had the lights dimmed so he could play video footage he claimed was related to genocidal violence committed by Black South Africans against their white compatriots.

One of the videos showed fringe politician Julius Mulema—who was kicked out of Ramaphosa's African National Congress party— leading a crowd in the singing of the apartheid-era song "Kill the Boer."

Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters party won a paltry 9% of the vote in last year's national elections. When Ramaphosa—who condemned the song—explained this to Trump, the U.S. president asked why the politician hasn't been arrested. While South Africa's highest court ruled in 2011 that the song is hate speech, Ramaphosa explained that, like Americans, South Africans enjoy constitutionally protected free speech rights.

Unlike United States citizens, though, South Africans enjoy the dubious benefits of a parliamentary government, in which a party garnering nine percent can be much more than an irritated rump.  For the past year, the African National Congress (Nelson Mandela's old party) has been in coalition with nine other parties.

MARINATE IN THE SMUG.

Maybe "Recharge your car while you recharge your inner man" is the way to go for private provision of charging stations for electric automobiles.  It's certainly more promising than whatever process-circus goes on tour each time another Biden regime charger opens.

But if you're Jalopnik's Amber DaSilva, you can't help but expose your inner Hillary Clinton.  "Waffle House Is Getting 400-kW DC Fast-Chargers So You Can Charge Your EV While You Brawl."

STUCK IN THE PUNISHMENT CYCLES?

Daily Economy contributor Paul Mueller asks, "Could Adopting Collectivist Activism Undo Classical Liberalism?"  His words answer his question.

Are unsavory people — grifters and opportunists rather than true intellectuals and thinkers — being fostered by “illiberal” tactics? Or are they being drawn to ascendant cultural and political power? I don’t know the contours of the Alt-Right well enough to say for sure — though I think the power and influence grift seems more likely.

He's properly fretful about the breakdown of bourgeois norms and not persuaded by "The leftists started this fight" sort of argument.

The resurgent political right around the world, perhaps epitomized by Trump and the MAGA movement, appears to be remaking how politics and conservatism look. And this has changed many of the Right’s tactics.

One contested issue involves debate over the definition and status of “classical liberalism.” Rufo says that the “classical liberal” approach to politics is outdated and ineffective. While that sounds like a  critique of classical liberalism as a philosophy, Rufo seems to mean that those who called themselves “classical liberals” in the second half of the twentieth century would be better characterized as “civil libertarians” focused on neutrality in the public square.

Well, when the Highly Sophisticated among us preach that there is no such thing as neutrality, pretending that it exists and it ought be championed loses the argument before it starts.

On the one hand, yes, the proper Tory could not stand up for bourgeois convention whilst disregarding it when it was expedient: that's precisely why Saul Alinsky advised protestors to Make The Establishment Play By Its Rules. On the other hand, the left didn't necessarily perceive the Tories as gentlemanly, yet misguided. Thus "Neanderthal" and "Racist" and latterly "Deplorable." Thus does the cold civil war heat up.

Mr Mueller expands on why Logical Argumentation might be something valuable per se.

Jonah Goldberg describes watching as “many on the right went from demonizing Saul Alinsky to respecting, to outright envying and wanting to emulate him. Many of those people stopped being conservative or classically liberal in the process.”

He also worries that “Adopting illiberal means to achieve liberal or even just “good” ends” tends to develop into “illiberal ends in the hearts of the people employing them.” Afterall, “Imposing your ideas through raw power is already pretty illiberal and leftist sounding.” Finally, “If our ‘team’ gains power but turns its back on free speech, freedom of association, free markets, due process, individual rights etc. there’s nothing to celebrate.”

To summarize Goldberg’s concerns, he sees classical liberalism as a distinct philosophy that is an important part of conservatism. He associates the distinctiveness of classical liberalism (liberal values) with values like: “free speech, freedom of association, free markets, due process, [and] individual rights.” Finally, Goldberg suggests that people on the Right have abandoned these principles when they adopted “illiberal” tactics advocated by the likes of Gramsci and Alinsky.

I doubt Rufo would disagree with the claim that some “illiberalism” has crept into corners of the Right. And he would likely agree that the growth of this illiberalism is bad. But I expect he differs from Goldberg in 1) Why this illiberalism has crept in and 2) Whether all Gramsci/Alinsky’s tactics are inherently illiberal.

No doubt some of Alinsky’s (and Gramsci’s) tactics are off-limits to conservative classical liberals. It would be tough to argue that conservatives should destroy property, for example, as a method of strengthening property rights. It would also be hard to argue that conservatives should engage in lawless acts to strengthen the rule of law. The means and ends in these cases seem antithetical. Goldberg worries about these “illiberal” methods — and not without reason!

All of which might be true, and yet, once you get into the punishment cycles of the grim strategy outcome, getting out is hard.

Something about the current political environment reminds me of the late stages of the Cold War, when the Reagan adminstration's foreign policy types rebuffed complaints from the conscience-cowboys about some of the regimes receiving United States support by drawing a distinction between the Communist states that were totalitarian, and those client states that ran authoritarian regimes.  That distinction lives on as our friends at Encyclopaedia Britannica note:

While totalitarian states tend to have a highly developed guiding ideology, authoritarian states usually do not. Totalitarian states suppress traditional social organizations, whereas authoritarian states will tolerate some social organizations based on traditional or special interests. Unlike totalitarian states, authoritarian states lack the power to mobilize the entire population in pursuit of national goals, and any actions undertaken by the state are usually within relatively predictable limits.

Forty years ago, the thinking went, the authoritarian states working with the United States to face down Communist totalitarianism were capable of relaxing their restrictions as the correlation of forces permitted, whilst the Communist totalitarian states had to be broken in totality.  There might be some of that in the behavior of the Trumpian populists who cause the libertarians such agony.  "On the other hand, perhaps it is more important than ever to distinguish between legal exercises of power to scale back the Left’s cultural and social hegemony and the lawless power grabs. Again, the Trump administration provides ample examples of both categories."  But restoring that state of good repair, the Nash equilibrium if you will, is not going to be easy.

Tension and disagreement will continue over whether some policies limit, or even violate, certain procedural values to enhance greater freedom and flourishing. On prudential grounds, conservative classical liberals may disagree about the “terms of engagement.” Perhaps we need more activism now to change the political and cultural game to the more neutral and polite terms civil libertarians want.

But we need to avoid becoming an alternate version of the ideology we reject.

Look, the Angry Left could sue for peace any time they want.  A simple apology for all the "Neanderthal" or "deplorable" talk might go a long way.  Fail to still that pendulum, enjoy the war of all against all.

COULD IT BE ANOTHER SEASON?

Hot Air contributor Beege Welborn confesses to a guilty Tuesday pleasure.

Normally, Tuesdays at our house are pretty chill, particularly once Winter rolls around. major dad and I get done with work, get 'the farm chores done' (as we have dubbed feeding the inside and outside zoos), and usually Dr. Alice comes over for dinner.

After we get done eating, she and I will settle in for another thrilling episode of The Curse of Oak Island while my long-suffering husband tries to find somewhere in the house free of the sound of 'Oh, look! It's another bobby dazzler!' or the admittedly annoying narrator saying, 'A corroded BUTTON?! COULD IT BE...?!' as if it were the most important discovery next to that of peanut butter and chocolate.

There have been a few more corroded buttons since then, and this season, the spurious references have been to the Hospitallers, relentlessly taking the limits as nothing over nothing approaches the bottom of the solution channel.  Over the winter, the crew had an enormous gob pile to sort through, the final exploration being an air-scouring of the bottom of that channel, and maybe another corroded button or two came up along with all the cobble and yet another fragment of a Shakespearean era pick-axe.  We'll have to wait until late fall for any evidence to come to light, as well as to gape at the latest civil engineering, sending a cluster of tangent caisson casings down to bedrock.  (That island is so undermined by searcher excavations that it's unlikely anything that might have been concealed down there is still in a stable formation.)  Let's see what the summer exploring season brings.

Her column was inspired by something that was indeed a rent in the firmament.

So here's a pretty wild list 🤯...@mynbc15 pic.twitter.com/kyiWzR5EFW

— Thomas Geboy (@ThomasGeboyWX) January 23, 2025

There's no snow falling in Green Bay, or DeKalb, today, but local high temperatures this week have  reached record lows not seen in the better part of a century.  Could it be there is no global warming?

MARKET TESTS HAVE STEEP GRADING CURVES.

Put another way, see, I told you so!

For the two decades of Cold Spring Shops posts, one message that I have stayed on almost obsessively is higher education going wrong by offering a sub-prime product.  I've come to the conclusion that the U.S. News problem exists in part because parents and students recognize much of higher education is a sham.

Now, dear reader, the shake-out is under way.

[T]he austerity in state universities that accompanied the shakeout of the unionized oligopoly industries that paid the taxes was an opportunity to raise admission standards and downsize the student body concomitantly with the faculty. That is not what happened. Just pick any month of my posts and read about it.

What might have happened, instead, is the revelation of the regional comprehensive universities as the stroads of higher education.  "The challenge for the state institutions in keeping up their perceived quality is two-fold. Administrators would like to put the failures to keep up on stingy legislatures, ignoring their own complicity whenever beer-'n-circus or access-assessment-remediation-retention crowds out calculus and statistics and economics and chemistry."

THERE THEY GO AGAIN.

The Democrats, whether they're attempting to deflect attention from the lies that kept Dementia Joe in national politics or not, are nothing if not predictable.

Last year, it was "Yes, without food, healthcare, and safety initiatives, Americans will die or get sick, whether they voted for Trump or not."

This year, it's more of the same.  "The Republican War Against the Working Poor Continues."  Because all that social spending has worked so well at enabling a more broadly shared prosperity.  But the populist froth can be so frothy, can't it?  "They hate people who need benefits. Those people are a drag on the ability of rich people to not pay taxes."  Don't you dare say "stop enabling dysfunction, you'll get less of it!"  It's so much easier to keep the punishment cycles going by asserting "Republicans hate you."

And if that fails, "children and minorities hardest hit" might work.

All who participate in Medicaid and SNAP would be at risk, including people with disabilities, seniors, and low-wage workers at jobs without affordable health insurance—but children would be disproportionately hurt: 44% of all American children benefit from Medicaid or SNAP, compared to 23% of adults under age 65."

The publication notes that "these budget reconciliation proposals threaten children of all races and ethnicities, but Latino families and others from historically marginalized communities are in particular danger. Two-thirds of the children who participate in Medicaid or SNAP come from communities of color, placing them at heightened risk from proposed cuts."

"A cautionary note about the numbers in this report is important: They significantly understate the number of children who benefit from Medicaid and SNAP," the report adds. "Our estimates are based on the best available national survey data, but survey respondents significantly under-report their participation in Medicaid and SNAP. If administrative data from these benefit programs was available with enough detail to answer the questions posed in this report, our numbers would be both higher and more accurate."

Gotta bring that moocher base back into the fold!

THE SEA WILL TRY VERY HARD TO KILL YOU.

Mexico's training ship, hermaphrodite brig Cuauhtémoc, was showing her stuff in New York and dressed ship Saturday evening before setting a course for Iceland.

Unattributed photograph retrieved from New York Post.

Then the engines failed at the worst possible time.

The majestic Cuauhtémoc — which has a crew of 277, mostly cadets — apparently lost power as it was sailing out of New York on its way to Iceland and the current carried it into the road deck of the bridge around 8:30 p.m., according to Mayor Eric Adams and footage of the crash.

The collision sheared off the ship’s 147-foot masts – with alarming footage capturing numerous crew members dangling for their lives from the sails and booms after the boat hit the bridge, which has a max clearance of 135 feet.

Town Hall's Matt Vespa filed a report with several examples of that "alarming footage."

There will be plenty for the boards of inquiry to contemplate.

LET'S TAKE A TRAIN RIDE.

Somebody might be able to learn something about the mind-set of people in "fly-over country" by riding a train through it.

THE LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE IMMUTABLE.

Defy them at your peril.  "A massive blackout in Spain shows what happens when energy policy ignores the physics of electricity."

IT'S NOT FOR YOU TO DECIDE.

The previous president^* had his version of "Nobody needs that."  It was silly then.  The current president decided that "too many dolls" was the stance he wished to take.

The first degrowth president  of the United States, President Trump, recently defended his tariffs with this gem: “They have ships that are loaded with stuff we do not need” and “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.” Meanwhile, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, lamented: “We invent the iPhone, which is awesome. Why do we let everyone else build it? Why can’t we build it here? . . . We need hundreds of thousands of Americans who work in those factories.”

It’s hard to overstate how economically ignorant, politically tone-deaf, and philosophically tyrannical these statements are.

Let’s start with Trump. Telling Americans what we need or don’t need and telling American parents that their children should be happy with fewer toys sold at higher prices because he has decided that’s how it should be. It is a master class in elite detachment. It also makes him sound like Bernie Sanders.

Well, yeah, all hail the bipartisanship.  I suppose I should take the wins on having the border closed and the mentally disturbed boys being kept out of girls' sports and the indirect cost scam being defunded.  And yet, some distance between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on things like tariffs and price gouging might be desirable.  "Without Congressional action, that secure border is one Obama pen and 'phone away from being insecure, and a more realistic budget, rather than yet another continuing resolution, is still due by late September."

FOUR BALLOTS, ONE POPE, ONE ERROR, AND NO POPE LEFT AT WRIGLEY.

You knew the cartoonists would roll out all the Chicago stereotypes when the conclave named Robert Cardinal Prevost as Leo XIV.  Margolis and Cox put pinstripes on the mitre.

At least they got the toppings on the pizza right.

In an interview with 9News Australia, Joe Aurelio, president of the Chicago-style thin crust pizza restaurant Aurelio’s, says that Pope Leo is a fan of the chain. He stopped by the Homewood, Illinois, location when visiting his family in August 2024 and ordered a pepperoni pizza. After he was elected head of the Catholic Church on May 8, 2025, the local pizzeria changed the dish’s name to “pope-erroni” and even trademarked the new moniker. The item seems to have the same ingredients as the restaurant’s typical pepperoni pizza, so customers will be buying it for its holy name and ties to the Vatican.

Should he ever return to Aurelio’s when visiting his hometown, Pope Leo will get the royal treatment. The Homewood location is now home to an “official Pope’s Table” featuring a priest’s chair brought in from a local church.

I wonder if they now announce closing time with "Extra omnes."

THANKS YET ANOTHER MILLION.

Cold Spring Shops started operating in September 2002. 

I'm not sure how good the Google visit counters are; we recorded our millionth view in April 2016.

Our two millionth view arrived in August 2020.

As of the middle of April 2024 the Google visit counter had us at three million views.

The four millionth view came in sometime on July 22, 2024. 

The five millionth view, according to the Google visit counter, came in today.

I'm not sure how much of it is people actually engaging the posts. The visit counters have been active the past week or two.

If you are reading and engaging with the posts, thank you. 

Perhaps you've found intellectual ammunition.

Perhaps I've encouraged you to look at something differently. 

Perhaps you've resolved not to take risks crossing railroad tracks.

Perhaps I've rubbed you the wrong way.

I surely am not lacking for material to carry on about.

Thanks again for looking in.  Enjoy.

GOING TRANSCONTINENTAL?

There are six major railroads serving the United States and Canada.  Canadian Pacific now own Kansas City Southern and lines in Mexico.  Canadian National operate the most trackage of any railroad in Wisconsin and Mississippi.  Union Pacific and BNSF still attempt some sort of through-running with Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation, but so far, the traditional gateways at St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago still divide east from west.

But now there are whispers across the railroad industry that some of the big systems are dusting off their merger playbooks and evaluating their options. Mergers, independent analyst Anthony B. Hatch says, are a hot topic in Class I boardrooms, second only to talk about the potential impact of tariffs.

Perhaps the two Canadian carriers, which are able to offer coast-to-coast service whether to the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Gulf, are concentrating minds in Omaha and elsewhere.

Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena says his view – setting regulatory challenges aside – is that a transcontinental merger would improve service and lead to growth by eliminating the inefficient and time-consuming interchanges that occur at Chicago and other gateways between the Eastern and Western railroads.

Railroads would become more competitive with trucks if it didn’t take 24 to 36 hours to hand off freight cars in Chicago. “You change the whole paradigm discussion with trucks on the highway versus what comes to the railroad,” Vena said in an interview last month.

The ability to provide fluid, single-line service from coast to coast – like Canadian National and CPKC can north of the border, and in CPKC’s case deep into Mexico – would help U.S. exporters and importers better compete globally, Vena contends.

Shippers, though, particularly large shippers, are wary of being dependent on a single carrier, given, in particular, how those carriers have downsized their way to prosperity of late.

There’s no question, industry observers say, that carload and bulk shippers would equate another Class I merger with World War III. Merging railroads would have to contemplate broadened access – in the form of trackage rights or reciprocal switching – for shippers who are served by just one railroad or would lose access to two.

In particular, the sort of shippers who used to be well-served by the granger railroads for which a 300 mile haul was a length-of-line haul are the ones not so well served by the current large systems.

Oliver Wyman consultant Adriene Bailey, in a RailTrends presentation in November, argued that if current Class I volume growth efforts don’t bear fruit, railroads will either have to turn to transcontinental mergers or try to shrink themselves to prosperity.

Eventually, a lack of growth will put pressure on railroad CEOs to boost earnings, she says.

“What are our options if rail fails to grow? Oliver Wyman sees two remaining choices,” Bailey said. “The first would be that the four largest Class I railroads merge into two transcontinental systems like Canada. The second would be for the Class I’s to shrink to greatness and share a lot more infrastructure.”

Creating two U.S. transcontinental systems would eliminate redundant headquarters costs, significantly expand the single-line service that shippers prefer, and open up so-called watershed markets, Bailey says. The watershed isn’t served well today because origins and destinations within a couple hundred miles of the Mississippi River are short hauls that are not attractive to the eastern or western railroads.

“Mergers may reduce some competitive options for shippers, but railroads will have a vested interest in keeping the volume from going back to trucks,” Bailey says.

Possibly.  The six major systems have for the past forty years or so been hiving off the retail railroading, and as the granger carriers either abandoned tracks or merged into other companies and ultimately into one of the six systems, the truckers have been winning that business by default.

A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO THE RABBIT CULTURE.

A self-styled feminist called Louise Perry recognized reality three years ago.  There's nothing in her work that skeptics of the new dispensation hadn't recognized thirty years ago.  "Some of us have known this for two score years.  Reality is socially conservative, and sometimes reality dawns after all life's illusions have disillusioned."

FOUR LAUNDRY HAMPERS.

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler awards the designers of Milwaukee's new natural history museum an "Eyesore of the Month."

Like many state museums, this one is a hodgepodge of history, nature (what used to be called natural history), ethnography (i.e., Indians), DEI nonsense (hey, it’s Wisconsin), and a miscellany of artifacts and freakish stuff that was the stock-in-trade of old-time Midwestern raree shows: a stuffed ivory-billed woodpecker (extinct). . . the William J. Uihlein Postage Stamp Collection. . . a deck of “Apache playing cards”. . . the skeleton of a mammoth found by farmer John Hebior in Kenosha County. . . costumes from Deakin's Lilliputian Comic Opera (a theater company of midgets circa 1880s). . . The DeFlores Collection of Disney Memorabilia, 1965-1987. . . and a clay seal imprinted with a hieroglyph signifying the name Tutankhamen (a.k.a. King Tut). Heck, I’d pay ten bucks to see all that!

Once upon a time, Milwaukee museum director Carl Akeley was an early adopter of the diorama display, rather than keeping the miscellany in glass cases.  A few of those might be brought over to the new museum, with locals making impassioned arguments for the rattlesnake and the T. rex having dinner.

We will be judged by the monuments we've destroyed.  "Below is an artist’s rendering of the lovely public plaza attached to the laundry hampers — as usual in American landscape design, an ambiguous zone with no formal elements, arbitrary tree plantings, and apparently no seating (homeless magnets)."

EIGHTY YEARS AGO.

The Allies are again commemorating the end of the War in Europe.  My meditation from ten years ago is sufficiently on point that I will simply quote the bulk of it.

Some four score years ago, the survival of constitutional republics and market economies, namely the institutions most friendly to emergence and evolutionary stable interactions, was very much in doubt, and the future looked very much to belong to the totalitarian state.

Saalfeld, Germany, June 1945.  John Karlson photograph.

There was no guarantee of victory going in, no guarantee that the ending would be one conducive to the emergence of expanded freedoms.  Thus, at the end of the war, the Perpetually Aggrieved inherited a starting position for their efforts much more favorable than it could have been.  Unearned privilege?  You decide.

Imagine a social order in which a Montgomery bus boycott, a Pettus Bridge, a march in Cicero would seem to non-Aryans as if a stroll in the park compared to life under a North American version of the Nuremberg Laws.

Imagine a social order in which expanded labor force participation for women might as well be a hallucination, given official encouragement of large families and official discouragement of the single life.

Imagine same-sex dating and mating criminalized so stringently that a Stonewall Bar would seem more like a car-port than a closet.

Imagine a Middle East free of conflict, because there would be no Israel, and whatever differences Shia and Sunni have with each other are secondary to Persians being Aryan and Bedouins being Semitic.

And thus, dear reader, whatever grievances you might have with the way things are, keep in mind that there's stuff in your privilege knapsack that you might not otherwise have.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

THE WISCONSIN SYNOD, ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Pope Leo XIV, born in Chicago with Wisconsin ties.  He is likely able to correctly pronounce "Kosciuszko" and "Oconomowoc."

While his Chicago origins already provide a strong local link, Pope Leo XIV also has significant connections through his religious order, the Augustinians, including a period of service in Wisconsin.

His journey within the Augustinians included a time when he served as a teacher at the Augustinian Novitiate in Oconomowoc.

The Augustinians have a presence in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, with communities and ministries that reflect their commitment to communal life, study, and service, following the Rule of Saint Augustine.

Parishes like St. Augustine of Hippo on Milwaukee's South Side also bear the name of the order's founder, Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Free Press contributor Matthew Walther, before getting on to the more serious stuff, notes, "Pope Leo XIV is almost certainly the first Vicar of Christ to have fond memories of the ’85 Bears."  The pope's brother has already answered the most important Chicago sports question.  Habemus fanaticus Soxus.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS CANNOT BE THEORIZED AWAY.

The Harold Stassen of the Socialist Party paid a visit to Brett Baier on Fox News and made himself a target for every Militant Normal.

"You think I'm going to be sitting on a waiting line," Caesar Flickerman -- excuse me, Bernie Sanders -- asks, "at United, while 30,000 people are waiting?" Sanders appeared on Fox News to answer questions about his Fight The Oligarchy tour, and Bret Baier honed in on the $220K-plus that Sanders has spent on private jet travel.

Sanders appeared to flounder, even though he knew the question had to be coming. "When was the last time you saw Trump at National Airport during a campaign?" Sanders asked, prompting Baier to quip, "Trump isn't fighting the oligarchy." Trump also owns his own plane, bought with his own funds, although his campaigns pay for the operating costs, of course.

That's a ringing endorsement for the mixed economy, isn't it?  Your tax dollars pay for the airports and the air traffic controllers and the security screening and for the mail carriage that keeps the air carriers liquid, and Delta isn't ready when Crazy Bernie is.  Let's be grateful he doesn't bring his dog along.

HABEMUS PAPAM!

Earlier today, the Cardinal Electors named Chicago native Robert Prevost, only recently frocked as a Cardinal and ministering to Latin America, as Pope.  He will serve as Leo XIV.

Students at Chicago's Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy, near the holy of holies for Cub fans, had an unusual active learning opportunity.  Some got to play Swiss Guards, and some got to play Cardinal Electors, and their classmates got some outdoor time to watch for the smoke.

Active learning!https://t.co/tJuqobz8Xk

— Stephen Karlson (@StephenKarlson) May 8, 2025

Somebody in Authority even provided for fishy crackers in case the balloting ran long.  I wonder if the allegory of loaves and fishes came up.  American raised Protestant posting, so excommunicate me.

VOICE IS A PROXY FOR GRIDLOCK.

Robert Caro chronicled the lives of two fallen icons of High Modern Authoritarianism, Lyndon Johnson in four volumes, and Robert Moses in The Power Broker.  Marc J. Dunkelman was reading Power Broker on the train from Washington to New York, where he scuttled in like a rat, and what he knew of attempts to turn The Pennsylvania Station into a proper station bothered him.  His research led to "This Is Why Your Holiday Travel Is Awful," which proved to be a preliminary sketch of Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress - and How to Bring it Back.

Mr Dunkelman offers Why Nothing Works as advice to the self-styled progressives among Democrat politicians, which is to say, to the people who "have an affirmative view of government and its effectiveness," to quote the very effective as mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel.  His thesis, plainly stated, is that progressivism, as he understands the term, "is undermining itself."  Why?  First, although the "affirmative view of government" is as old as the Republic itself, in policy form it might be the Supervision of Wise Experts, which begins with Alexander Hamilton and the American System, or it might be Skepticism of Overweening Authority, which begins with Thomas Jefferson and those unalienable rights, with the small platoons checking the powerful.  Second, the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian impulses wax and wane, both among the political classes and the people.  Third, he argues, nothing works because the Jeffersonian impulses among the self-styled progressives of today, who mostly argue with but vote for Democrats, are currently too strong.  To borrow from Archie Bunker, in the course of Mr Dunkelman's investigation of why The Pennsylvania Station remained a rat-run despite efforts from everywhere to fix it, more than one of his interlocutors noted, "Mister, we could use a man like Robert Moses again."

Book Review N^o. 2 will note both strengths and weaknesses in his argument.  It is hard not to like a book that often validates my "process, nuance, failure" lament over the procedural politics whether of the academy or of government.  It's encouraging to read a younger man who has an understanding of how Congress delegated its power first to the independent regulatory commissions and latterly to the administrative state and administrative law and Chevron deference.  It's also encouraging when a younger man sees the way in which the values regime that allegedly tamed the Depression and then won the War took a shape well-suited to taming the Depression and winning the War: and proved unsuited to the peace and prosperity that followed.  And yet, his fear that an excess of Jeffersonian dispersal of powers to the groups is what midwived populism fails to convince.

THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS IS EVIL.

Reason's Brian Doherty compares Our President with a criminal autocrat.  "The Worst Parts of Trump's First 100 Days Involved Ignoring Libertarian Principles."  That's probably true, and he's had his reservations about Mr Trump for some time.

Before the 2024 election, I wrote about the perplexing phenomenon of libertarians who enthusiastically supported Donald Trump for president, given his anti-libertarian and authoritarian temperament, his being "fanatically against free trade," and pushing a "short-term promise to assault and kidnap and ship out millions of residents who have harmed no one's life or property, and in doing so destroy huge chunks of America's productive economy, disrupting the lives of the other millions of legal citizens who hire them, work for them, depend on their services, or rent and sell to them."

How Trump's administration has misgoverned in its first 100 days, with his most destructive abuses arising from his rejection of core libertarian principles about trade policy and immigration, the movement of goods and people across arbitrary government barriers, demonstrates why trying to supposedly balance those ferociously anti-libertarian tendencies with his acceptably libertarian ones (a stated commitment to shrinking size and cost of government, through Elon Musk's efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency, have delivered less than promised, are rife with reporting errors, and seem to be aimed not at making government any more sensible or useful so much as scoring institutional points against the administration's perceived leftist enemies) leads to accepting near complete collapse of any meaningful distinctions between the U.S. government and the worst economically interventionist and authoritarian tyrannies.

It's not so surprising when one contemplates a bad interventionist and authoritarian tyranny in the form of the Jarrett regency.

"He's had the worst 100 days any president's ever had," Biden said of his Oval Office successor.

Biden maintained he would have beaten Trump in the election, but said he accepted some blame for Trump's victory because of voter concerns about border security and the cost of living during his tenure.

"I do, because, look, I was in charge and he won. So, you know, I take responsibility," the former president said.

Every so often a senile person has a lucid moment. "Biden also noted 'liberal democracies lost' across the world, and believes they underestimated the negative impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on people's attitudes."  You think?  Maybe government is the problem.

Mr Doherty is correct that Trumpian populism is often economically illiterate and counter to libertarian principles.

A core libertarian insight is that the values, abilities, and desires of others—their supply and their demand, in economics lingo—are most fully and coherently expressed in a world where the violent barriers (and yes, a tariff is a tax which is a violent barrier) to other people making the choices they see best fit are minimized or eliminated. This principle has baked into it awareness of the bad outcomes Trump is seeing from his tariff-y flailing: intelligent plans impossible to make, costs rising, and opportunities for humans to better circumstances for others even as they better their own made more difficult or destroyed.

That's true.  But the ham-handed roll out of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency might have been the best of all possible real-world outcomes.  "[W]e're unlikely to see the Democrats swearing off their economic illiteracy and embracing Rand Paul and Thomas Massie to head their ticket or write their platform."  I added emphasis to that quote.  The support Our President continues to enjoy is transactional, but then ripping off the band-aid might be transactional.

Yes, you can use the language of the faculty lounge to lament borders as "arbitrary barriers:" and yet, "[A]ny social organization is going to have insiders and outsiders."  Those barriers are purposeful human action, perhaps set in concrete.

A STEAM STAR REQUIRES A REFIT.

The Illinois Railway Museum's "Uncle Boris" is the primary power for the summer season coach trains.

The locomotive is one of the World War I era "Russian Decapods" that was stranded Stateside after the Great October Socialist Revolution.  (Another two thousand locomotives built to the same plans but with better metallurgy went to the Soviet Union as Lend-Lease in the 1940s.)

WELL, IF YOU GO CHASING RABBITS.

You end up, Inside Higher Ed contributor Uddipana Goswami suggests, not feeding your head.  "Slowing down is key to more meaningful, intentional teaching and scholarship."  Nothing has changed.  "[T]here's enough free agency among academicians, particularly those still holding tenured posts, that academic work life is a bundle of self-made purgatories."

GIMME MORE ROAD SOCIALISM, DAMMIT!

The populist-right blind spot involving road socialism, summer culture wars version. "Get out of the middle of the damn road. The streets of America were designed for cars..."

Dear Bicyclists: The Roads Were Built for Cars https://t.co/IAAPwJmBPz

— Stephen Karlson (@StephenKarlson) May 3, 2025

The self-reference among Pajamas Media Types took it from there, with the Blogfather quipping, "Yes, there's a reason why people hate them."  That reason?  "I’m convinced that so many people hate cyclists because they’re perceived as cheaters, demanding the rights of cars when it suits them, then running traffic lights or u-turning in traffic without a thought."

Not surprisingly, the bull session engaging that post has turned to deflection and slanging.

TAKING STOCK OF THE ROT IN HIGHER EDUCATION.

Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball has been paying attention for a long time.

More and more, it seems, academia (like other aspects of elite cultural life) has reneged on its compact with society. One of the great ironies that attends the triumph of political correctness is that in department after department of academic life, what began as a demand for emancipation recoiled, turned rancid, and developed into new forms of tyranny and control.

Well, yes, and he's been doing yeoman service calling attention.

I have been calling attention for years, and don't mind at all when people with bigger platforms than mine recognize that the first step in correcting failure is to admit failure.  The refreshingly solid Republican victories in national election might be the sort of evidence that would encourage academicians to revise their priors.  Let's start with Michael Clune, professor of English at Case Western, with "We Asked for It" in the house organ for business as usual.

Yes, I have reservations about the populist economic illiteracy out of the Trump presidency, but we would likely be seeing the same thing with the Jarrett regency continuing to blunder, with business as usual in higher education and open borders to boot.  "If the second Trump presidency can bring to pass what observers as varied as Allan Bloom or Charles 'Prof Scam' Sykes and Martin Anderson long ago called attention to, all the better."

THE PRICE OF SUCCESS.

Carli Lloyd had a rough time with the skills tests during the Special Forces reality show, during which time other sorts of rough times presented themselves.  "She hired a life coach of some kind, the better to be able to get to the highest levels of women's footie, and that might have contributed to the rift with her kin."  Despite that, she successfully completed the course.

THE ARTLESS WORDS OF STUDENTS.

The editorial board of The Northern Star describe a change in language on the university's web page as "a strategic shield against federal retaliation."

Facing a federal mandate threatening the university’s accreditation, NIU made the controversial choice to remove Diversity, Equity and Inclusion language from its website After removing its DEI page on Feb. 1 in response to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, the move left a mixed reaction among NIU students.

Signed on Feb. 18, Trump gave universities two weeks to eliminate their DEI programs. In a fight against “wokeness,” Trump’s order calls for universities to eliminate race-based consideration in admissions, financial aid and more.

As a result of multiple orders, NIU removed its DEI page, replacing it with a page entitled “Inclusive Excellence.” The new page is similar to the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at NIU” page, but not identical, removing explicit references to discrimination-based initiatives but still keeping the same intention as the old page.

I have no doubt that there will be people on campus, not necessarily students, raising hell with the editors for calling discrimination-based initiatives by their real name.  I also have no doubt that there will be critics of higher education referring to the mostly cosmetic copy-editing as strategic editing to keep the search engines at bay.  "Alternative language gaining steam includes 'access' 'advocacy' 'belonging' 'community' 'resilience' and 'success.'"

SUMMER DRIVING SEASON IS UPON US.

Sometimes, all you can do is grin and bear it.

History was made today as the guy weaving in and out of traffic ahead of you on the freeway was awarded an impressive 1st place trophy after he arrived at the offramp a full 15 seconds before all the other cars he impatiently swerved around.

"I feel really proud of this momentous achievement," said Brent Larson after pulling up to the stop light a few seconds ahead of the other cars. "Those other losers were just going too slow. I've gotta get off the freeway, man! Now look at me — I'm sitting here at the red light at the bottom of the ramp, and all those cars I passed are stuck staring at my tail lights. Suckers!"

Larson credited his overly aggressive driving and wanton disregard for roadway safety for his astounding ability to arrive at the light one-quarter of a minute ahead of other motorists. Drivers of the vehicles Larson passed seemed oblivious to his accomplishment. "Yeah, he doesn't seem very patient," said Ken Rawlings, who drove at a respectable speed and arrived at the same place only a few seconds later. "But, hey, if it makes him feel like he did something impressive…yay for him, I guess."

Larson was undeterred by the lack of enthusiasm from his fellow drivers. "They're just jealous, man," he said. "They wish they were the ones who got here at the same offramp stop light at virtually the same time after those sweet driving moves I put on display. Ha ha! Whatever, losers!"

It's a satire site, and the guy illustrated brandishing his trophy looks way too relaxed, compared with the usual stressed-out countenance of those aggressive lane-changers.

We leave as an exercise whether the article is mocking the maltimed traffic lights that trip up the law-abiding and the lane-switching alike.

WHEN THE POLITICAL BUNDLES ARE TOO BIG, PERHAPS GRIDLOCK IS OPTIMAL.

Dalibor Rohac, who writes for The Bulwark, provokes the reader.  "Too Much Democracy Is Killing Democracy."  His wish?  "A more boring politics, populated by forgettable yet basically competent figures instead of fame-craving clowns and provocateurs would be a great place to start."  These days, politics is anything but, whether in Hungary or the United States or ... France or Canada???

Darren of Right on the Left Coast reminds us, "Our governmental system is designed to ensure that passions are moderated."  That might be a good way to start a fight with political scientists.  Over the years I have had a few frank and open exchanges of views with political science types about things like voting efficiency and representation.  I've not yet figured out where positive political science leaves off and normative policy prescriptions begin.  Nevertheless, I maintain that political bundles are too big, and disequilibrium the most likely outcome.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The higher learning.  "These schools helped create this situation in the first place--it was only a few decades ago that state and federal money weren't even a part of their budgets.  They wanted this money, and were confident that their influence with lawmakers would shield them from political influence they didn't like.  They had their cake and ate it too--they railed against America, Americans, and capitalism.  They then deposited huge sums of money from the very governments and taxpayers for whom they professed hate and against whom they trained their students to destroy."

Liberating tolerance, until it's unlawful.  "To be clear, this is not a free-speech issue, it is a conduct issue.  Trespassing is conduct, not speech.  Vandalism is conduct, not speech.  Blocking entrances is conduct, not speech.  Spitting on police is conduct, not speech.  Stopping traffic is conduct, not speech.  Disrupting commencement is conduct, not speech.  Tagging benches with graffiti is conduct, not speech.  Barricading yourself in a building is conduct, not speech.  Taking over a meeting is conduct, not speech.  Attacking someone is conduct, not speech."

Reap what you sow, David Brooks.  "It was those excesses, and others that Brooks has implicitly endorsed for the past four years, that led to the greatest political comeback in American political history, the re-election of Donald Trump.  Now, just three months into the comeback that Brooks unwittingly helped to facilitate, he wants to overturn the election because Trump is doing what he promised.  He wants an uprising?  Sounds like insurrection to me.  Then again, if you think law firms, nonprofits, and civil servants are the cornerstones of Western civilization you have bigger problems than Donald Trump."  Bet on emergence.  "All these government programs that regulate and control, they institutionalize mediocrity at best."

It can play in no other way.  "When outsiders are rude to insiders, it often plays as righteous rebellion against an insolent system.  When insiders are rude to outsiders, it inevitably plays as haughty arrogance.  I know there are many who believe the same applies to Trump and Republicans, now in power and currently making a mess of the economy.  It doesn’t matter.  Americans instinctively understand progressives to forever hold the whip hand in matters of culture, even political culture — which explains far too many of the excuses for Trump’s own behavior now floating around.  Only opponents can break those rules without suffering consequences, not the people who are defending the status quo."

Being mean or telling the truth is indistinguishable to far too many people. Thus:  High School Never Ends—Especially in Washington.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

THE POWER GRID HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN.

People who understand power systems are taking stock of the latest large-area blackout.  The fundamental problem a grid manager faces is that there's little by way of inventory.  “The grid is a synchronous system with no graceful failure mode.”  

One grid manager, the Nebraska Municipal Power Pool, explains.

Modern society requires electricity to be available on-demand around the clock. Fulfilling this need requires constant monitoring of electric demand on the electric grid and then matching that demand with electric load from various electricity generation sources.

Accomplishing this continual critical feat is a balancing act of epic proportions. It requires sources of energy that are “dispatchable” — an industry term essentially meaning a resource can be counted on when needed. This concept is critical in understanding why it takes a diverse mix of resources to operate the electric grid.

There are many sources of fuel that can produce electricity — the most typical being nuclear, coal, natural gas, hydro, wind and solar. Each of these resources has strengths and drawbacks when it comes to generating electricity. Some resources are more environmentally favorable while others are more reliable because they are dispatchable, or available when needed.

Dispatchable fuel resources include nuclear, coal, and natural gas. These fuel sources are highly reliable because each fuel is a constant supply. These are known as baseload resources.

Examples of non-dispatchable fuel resources include wind, solar and hydro-generated electricity (although some hydro generation can also be considered a baseload resource). These resources are environmentally beneficial because they produce no emissions, however, they are not always available — the wind doesn’t always blow, the sun doesn’t always shine, and, depending on location and weather conditions, water may not always be available to generate electricity.

The strategy for most utilities is to have a diverse mix of fuel resources, using both dispatchable and non-dispatchable forms of power supply to strike a balance between being environmentally conscious while not compromising reliability, ensuring a steady flow of electricity is always available.

Emmett Penney's summary for the Free Press of what might have gone wrong in Spain reinforces several of the points we examined earlier in the week.

Simply put, the power grid is like a giant game of tug-of-war. On one side, there’s demand, and on the other, there’s supply. Keeping the lights on involves making sure the rope between supply and demand remains taut. This tautness is called inertia.

Healthy inertia means healthy grid frequency, which in Europe means 50 hertz (in the United States it’s 60 hertz). In the version of events initially attributed to REN, something along one of its power lines disrupted the even flow of power between generators on its grid, which messed with the frequency, which likely tripped off more wind and solar, which slackened the rope, which probably caused the blackouts.

At least, that’s what we can infer based on what else was happening on the Spanish grid. As reported by Bloomberg’s Javier Blas, at the time of the blackout, the country had a slim percentage of dispatchable power generation in the mix. For those new to power sector terminology, dispatchable means sources that can switch on to meet demand when you need them.

That "healthy inertia" article offers a more intuitive explanation of the heavily mathematical notion of achieving stability by balancing electrical torque against mechanical torque.

Many generators producing electricity for the grid have spinning parts – they rotate at the right frequency to help balance supply and demand and can spin faster or slower if needed.

The kinetic energy ‘stored’ in these spinning parts is our system inertia. If there’s a sudden change in system frequency, these parts will carry on spinning – even if the generator itself has lost power – and slow down that change (what we call the rate of change of frequency) while our control room restores balance.

You don't want sudden changes in system frequency exceeding some very tight tolerances, and when everything is running properly, all the spinning parts are spinning at the same frequency; and the electrical torque exactly matches the mechanical torque.