TRICK OR TREAT ON THE TROLLEY.

The Fox River Trolley Museum continues to recover from the summer vandalism.

That's last Saturday's Ghost Story Train.  The cars are former Chicago single-unit Spam Cans which in their service life were equipped with trolley poles for off-peak service between Howard and Linden on the Evanston line.

The cars are suitably decorated inside, and storytellers rode the train, which shuttled to the forest preserve where children of all ages could disembark for a campfire, s'mores, and seasonal storytelling.

There will be a Polar Express train at weekends commencing November 18. Those trains will board at the forest preserve, and Santa will be at the North Pole.

I wonder if there will be ghost stories on the Christmas trains.  There's an allusion to telling ghost stories in "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."  "A Christmas Carol" is perhaps the most famous Christmas ghost story, but that was respecting a tradition, until recently honored by Railway each December, of telling ghost stories at that time of the year, which might not have been so wonderful in the absence of natural light.

THE ROCKETS OF HELWAN NEVER FLEW.

Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard have written a series of whodunits featuring murders or historical events: Killing Kennedy, Killing Patton, Killing Jesus, there are others.  Perhaps I should have learned from my relatively short reviews of these to leave Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History on the shelf, but I got it at a bargain and we'll get a short Book Review N^o. 32 out of it.

There's not a lot that's new in his story, but perhaps I'm old enough to remember Heinrich Himmler committing suicide shortly after his captors identified him, and Hermann Göring committing suicide just before he was to be hanged, and Martin Bormann probably died trying to get out of Berlin, and the Israelis had to lay on a super-secret mission to kidnap Adolf Eichmann, as the usual sort of extradition conventions wouldn't have worked.

I did learn from the book that Israeli intelligence hoped to scoop up Josef Mengele as part of the same super-secret mission.  That failed.

My post title refers to a surprise.  Years ago, Frederick Forsyth's The ODESSA File comes up with a fictional story in the course of which Israeli intelligence prevents German rocket scientists working in the United Arab Republic (the Egyptian part, that is) from completing short range ballistic missiles to flip at Israel.  The truth, if Messrs. O'Reilly and Dugard are to be believed, is even stranger.  But you'll have to check the book out from your library to discover it.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN A RESOUNDING SUCCESS.

Ned Ryun elaborates.  Is it really necessary to have a web site called "American Greatness?"  I'm afraid so.  Even the brightest among you might benefit by a modicum of repetition.

Just over 250 years ago, a small agrarian nation, 13 upstart colonies, threw off the yoke of the world’s last, most powerful empire. Our nation became the most technologically advanced, diverse, free, and prosperous country the world has ever seen.

It was founded not on the basis of any one ethnicity or the heritage of a single family, but as a creedal nation rooted in individual liberty, voluntary association, and a proper understanding of human nature. America’s Founders knew that man left to his own devices was no angel, but would rather seek dominion over his fellow man. They designed a system that divided and diffused powers, pushing most of the day to day management of government to the most local level possible, while checking the impulses of our national government with institutions designed to protect the rights of the people. It was a profound event in human history, which many thought could never last.

Yes, and apparently being the land of opportunity continues to motivate people to come here, that despite having opportunities to get out of their current circumstances in countries closer to home and more like their old country in language and culture.

WHAT EVIDENCE WOULD CONVINCE YOU TO CHANGE YOUR MIND?

The Cold Spring Shops position on academic inquiry is simple.

WHATEVER MAY BE THE LIMITATIONS WHICH TRAMMEL INQUIRY ELSEWHERE, WE BELIEVE THAT THE GREAT STATE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SHOULD EVER ENCOURAGE THAT CONTINUAL AND FEARLESS SIFTING AND WINNOWING BY WHICH ALONE THE TRUTH CAN BE FOUND.

These days, though, the limitations are internal, and the trammelling is for fear of offending noisy people whose priors are tight. “It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.” In the strange world of today's academy, though, the courage is in illustrating your trendy bona fides.

FREQUENCY, CONNECTIVITY, AND INTERLINE TICKETING.

Just honor the tickets, I maintain.  I'm vindicated.

Amid reports that some passenger have been kicked off crowded trains on the Hartford Line, the state is asking Amtrak to add cars to some trips between Springfield and New Haven to relieve overcrowding.

“We’re really watching a new market emerge here,” James P. Redeker, the state transportation commissioner., said. “The good news is that the program is working, ridership is growing.”While the Hartford Line provides much of the train service on the four-month-old commuter rail line, Amtrak trains also serve the route. Redeker said he did not have an exact timetable because Amtrak does not have a lot of extra cars. Amtrak trains on the Hartford Line have two cars and Hartford Line trains have four.

Prior to the start of the Hartford Line in June, Amtrak transported about 725 passengers a day between Springfield and New Haven. That number has now climbed to 2,000 with the introduction of the Hartford Line, boosted by more trips, lower fares and no caps on ticketing.

In common with the rest of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, the Springfield service, connecting with the electrified line at New Haven, is by reservation, and reservations plus high fares mean low ridership.

Now comes the Knowledge Corridor regional line, and it appears their tickets are good on Amtrak.  (Is anybody in the Chicago or Boston area paying attention?)

Connecticut Public Radio reported Friday that some with CTrail tickets and U-Passes, which give students at participating colleges unlimited travel on buses and trains, were getting kicked off Amtrak when those trains reached capacity.

The WNPR report cited two instances on the 4:32 p.m. out of Union Station in Hartford, and the long wait that followed for the next train.

Redeker said this may have happened for a couple of reasons. First, when Amtrak provides the service, it has two-car trains, while Hartford Line trains have four.

But it also may have more to do with past, ticket-selling practices at Amtrak. Before the Hartford Line, Amtrak worked on a reservation system, selling only as many seats as were available, at about 80 per car.

The Hartford Line removed caps on ticket sales. The incidents of passengers being asked to get off trains is probably tied to conductors filling in on the Hartford Line who normally work other routes, Redeker said. They probably aren’t familiar with the unlimited seating, he said.

“That’s completely unacceptable,” Redeker said. “We don’t want to see that, and I’m sure Amtrak doesn’t want to see that.”

Amtrak issued this statement: “Amtrak and CTDOT are working together to resolve the crowding issues that are occurring on some Hartford Line trains.”

It's not quite the freedom to choose any train the holder of a British Rail pass enjoys. It's a small beginning, though, if true.

PUT YOUR CONFIDENCE IN EMERGENCE.

I've long been skeptical of Wise Experts Coming Up With Standard Policies, that skepticism expressed simply as "The simplest explanation for the troubles the political establishment are having with the voters is that the political establishment is doing things badly. But nobody wants to admit it."  But that doesn't stop all the Regular Practitioners from doing all the Regular Things.  Generally that means seizing on some relatively simple difficulty as a "crisis" and chattering back and forth about how to Best Modify the Standard Policies.

The problem with calling every little thing a crisis is that you run out of words to properly characterize a big thing that might deserve that sort of attention.

JUST. DO. YOUR. JOB.

During the summer, Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers characterized some of his receivers' efforts in practice as "piss poor."

He probably wasn't happy with converted receiver Ty Montgomery, currently part of the running back rotation, and probably no longer returning kicks.

Rodgers fully expected return man Ty Montgomery to kneel down for a touchback, given that the running back had been instructed by his coaches to do just that. Instead, Montgomery caught the ball 2 yards deep and raced up the middle of the field, crossing the 20 before being met by the Rams Ramik Wilson. And then, a green-and-gold nightmare: Wilson's hard hit on Montgomery dislodged the football, which the L.A. linebacker would recover under a pile.

The Packers are currently treating the oopsie, which spoiled an otherwise good opportunity for a visiting team to pay out the Rams before another visiting team paid out the Dodgers (Manny Machado swinging at strike three to end the World Series, sweet schadenfreude) before a stadium full of noisy Packer fans. There were more than a few noisy Red Sox fans at the Dodgers' park, as well.  Just another reason to understand that contemporary California is not as inspirational as Beach Boys California.

We'll see what goes on in the Packer front office and locker rooms this week.

"Aaron was hot," one Packers coach said. "And he had a right to be. He yelled, 'Take a f------ knee!' He was very, very mad."

In the eyes of many of Rodgers' teammates, his ire was justifiable. According to more than a half-dozen Packers players and coaches who witnessed it, Montgomery had thrown a tantrum of his own on Green Bay's previous offensive series, becoming noticeably enraged on the sideline after being removed from the game. At least one player believed there was carryover from that incident to Montgomery's decision to disregard his coaches' instruction and return the kickoff.

"They took him out (the previous drive) for a play and he slammed his helmet and threw a fit," one Packers player said. "Then (before the kickoff) they told him to take a knee, and he ran it out anyway. You know what that was? That was him saying, 'I'm gonna do me.' It's a f------ joke.

"I mean, what the f--- are you doing? We've got Aaron Rodgers, the best I've ever seen, and you're gonna take that risk? I mean, it's '12'! All you gotta do is give him the ball, and you know what's gonna happen."

We'll be following developments.

Historically, the Packer Way has involved patience, but it's been eight seasons since the Packers' last title.

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Browns today parted ways with a head coach who amassed a 3-36-1 record.  The three wins and a tie all came in this season.

SECOND SECTION.  From today's press conference summary.

Montgomery expressed dismay at the questioning of his character and team commitment. [Head coach Mike] McCarthy didn’t go down that road, stressing his belief through a quarter century of coaching in this league that players care more than anything “about not disappointing their teammate.”

Plus

“There’s a lot of things to build off of, but the situational awareness, execution, communication down the stretch there, that was our failure,” McCarthy said. “We need to be better.

“There was frustration, disappointment, anger, all that in the locker room, because it was a game we expected to win, and felt like we may have had an opportunity to. That’s where we are.”

Coming up on Sunday, a nationally televised game from Massachusetts.

A CHRISTMAS MARKET, WITH ROLLER COASTERS.

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas, with the Christkindlmarkt season soon to begin.

In Hamburg, the preseasonal market includes roller coasters!

That description is all auf Deutsch.  There's an English translation.  It appears that this seasonal market is done shortly after the feast of St. Nicholas.  I wonder if a trip to Hamburg in July or August is in order?

IT TAKES A TARIFF BEFORE BIG STEEL SEIZES THE OPPORTUNITY?

Mainline railroad tracks these days comprise quarter-mile lengths of welded rail clipped to concrete ties, which eliminates a lot of bolts at the joint bars and spikes at the tie plates to work loose.  The longer the piece of stick rail the welding plant has to work with, the fewer weak spots there are in the rails.

By the 1980s, head-hardened rail was developed, cooling steel at a rate that provided additional strength. The new standard section became 80 feet, requiring 17 welds to create a quarter-mile length. Longer rail sections continued to be developed, but weren't as strong.

During this time, Union Pacific, Nippon Steel of Japan and Sumitomo Metal Corp. began discussing a revolutionary idea – manufacturing and shipping high-strength, head-hardened continuous-cast rail in 480-foot-long sections. With access to long rail, only two welds are needed to create quarter-mile lengths, representing an 88 percent reduction in the number of welds.

Union Pacific evaluated many options for the 480-foot rail sections, including U.S. manufacturers. The company selected the only supplier who met all the necessary requirements for length, strength and weight, which are essential in providing safe, reliable rail.

That might have been a missed opportunity for U.S. steel producers, but that doesn't come as any surprise.  I noted, fifteen years ago, the last time a Republican president was toying with steel tariffs, the reluctance of steel producers to compete.  "[S]ome of the majors spent more resources figuring out that thin-slab casting would not work, rather than investigating ways to make it work, which it does." So too, might it have been, with U.S. rail mills.  Nippon Steel, however, built the rolling and finishing stands, and commissioned a ship to transport the long rail.

Sumitomo designed "Pacific Spike," the first ship in the world serving as a long rail shuttle for Union Pacific. It’s outfitted with three cranes synchronized to simultaneously unload five rails weighing 10 tons. The rail is stacked three bundles high onto specially designed shuttle cars to be moved from the dock to storage.

Construction on the Port of Stockton's roughly 25 acres just finished. Typically, new facilities are built around old rail yards, but this one was designed nearly from scratch. The port has three tracks and two bridges, plus custom storage and welding facilities designed to accommodate the additional rail length.

The $18 million welding facility, equipped with a special overhead crane to lift the rail, began operations this week. Despite the unique nature of the process, standard weld techniques are used to create quarter-mile lengths, which are loaded onto a standard rail train and shipped out for use. UP's Engineering Department is still determining where the first long rails will be placed.

Pacific Spike began sailing, and the new quay and welding plant went into operation, in 2015.

Then came Our President, and his steel tariffs.  A rhetorical question from that post is germane.  "[W]hat prevented U.S. Steel from running the works at capacity in 2015 the better to undersell the competition?" That's the Granite City Works, which is one of Our President's bragging points, and it doesn't produce rail, but there are rail mills in the States.  And yet, somehow sending metal scrap or Australian ore to Japan to roll rails and load them onto Pacific Spike still doesn't offer domestic mills a business opportunity?

Meanwhile, Pacific Spike was recently held out of port.

Union Pacific is facing increased costs of around $4 million for each shipload of special “long rail” it imports from Japan unless it obtains a waiver from the federal government.

One shipment that took two weeks to cross the Pacific Ocean was held up for nearly six more weeks in San Francisco Bay until the tariff was paid, although a Union Pacific representative says the delay did not slow down the railroad’s rail replacement work.

That article suggests domestic steel producers didn't know how to do the engineering, or something. "When Union Pacific announced the beginning of the rail imports in 2015, it said Sumitomo had developed a means of manufacturing 480-foot rail with sufficient strength that domestic suppliers could not match, which is the basis for its tariff waiver filing."

Perhaps the engineers have done their homework, or perhaps the tariff is functioning the way the advocates of import-substitution intended.  The Association for Iron and Steel Technology reports that Evraz North America, operating the old Colorado Fuel & Iron rail mill in Pueblo, will build a plant to roll 100 meter rail sections.  Here's the elevator pitch from Evraz.  Interestingly, both Evraz and Steel Dynamics, a company started by Nucor veterans, both roll more rail than the Japanese.  Nobody, domestically, yet, rolls a 480 foot (roughly 150 meter) rail.

There is not yet an announcement of a Trump campaign rally in Pueblo, the way there have been near Granite City during the current Congressional elections.

POLITICAL ECONOMY, SUMMARIZED.

D. N. McCloskey, in Reason.  "In truth, libertarians sit nowhere on the left-right map, which merely captures a dispute about how to use the government's monopoly of violence. The right wants to use violence to support 800 U.S. bases abroad. The left wants to use it to boss poor people around. Libertarians want neither."

Libertarians understand emergence.  The political left and political right think they can manage it.  The balance of the article elaborates.

DISTRIBUTED NETWORKS, IMPROVED MASS TRANSIT.

Boston is one of the country's biggest college towns, with one of the world's quaintest rail transit networks, and online not-quite-advocacy but not-quite-ferroequinology might be helping improve the commuter experience, particularly at bar time.

One Sunday night two years ago, Marc Ebuña and Ari Ofsevit stayed up past 1 a.m. to watch the city’s transit system grind to a pointless halt.

Sitting in their respective apartments, they were monitoring a website that tracks Boston’s rapid-transit trains in real time. “I live-tweeted the late-night ballet, the last-trains ballet,” Ebuña says. Except what they were seeing was more of a citywide muscle spasm than an elegant dance.

At system closing time, or if the owl car service runs on longer headways, it matters that the last cars make their connections, lest passengers be stranded overnight or until the next owl car, particularly in sketchy neighborhoods.

Ebuña and Ofsevit, who had plenty of the personal experience waiting on trains during these puzzling delays, enlisted two fellow members of their advocacy group TransitMatters and did their own audit.

On that September night in 2016, Ebuña and Ofsevit could see the last trains on the Red, Orange and Blue lines, and the westbound Green Line streetcars, as they reached downtown transfer stations and stopped. The only trains still moving were two lonely streetcars on the Green Line’s E branch. Nothing could move until these two stragglers reached Park Street. Across Boston, Ebuña and Ofsevit knew, 56 buses, many carrying tired shift workers, were idling outside stations, awaiting the trains’ arrival before they fanned out with their last passengers. For a quarter-hour, the Green E trains had held up the entire system.

Ebuña took screenshots and fired off a tweetstorm that night. Ofsevit blogged about the 1 a.m. bottleneck the next afternoon. Another member scraped daily data off a transit website that tracks MBTA trains. The numbers showed that the last Green E train caused about 75 percent of the delays in the transit system’s nightly shutdowns.

That last car generally carried only one passenger.

It transpires that the car in question is still on the line, returning to Central Boston to lay up, as there is no terminal at the end of its line to pull into.  Thus the connecting cars and buses are waiting for one lightly-loaded car to return to Boston, long after all the other owl cars and buses have pulled in at car stations at the outer ends of their lines.  "What they found illustrates how good intentions can sometimes lead to inopportune outcomes."

Amateur Planner breaks down the scheduling difficulties, the possible improvements, and the lost overnight maintenance time, all for the lack of an Arborway car house.  Instructive, with lots of links to the social media communications that revealed the problems.

The better outcome, the article suggests, is for Boston to view itself as a city that never sleeps.

Many Bostonians work well into the night or very early in the morning at Logan Airport, at our hospitals, at restaurants and bars, and at businesses in the innovation sector that know no boundaries of the clock. This should surprise no one. It’s what great cities do. It’s what 21st Century cities do.  It’s what most other cities in the United States do: they work around the clock.

Our plan for overnight service would serve those workers, and respond to this clear and persistent need.  The owners of the highly regarded restaurant Myer & Chang spoke recently on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio program about how the lack of overnight service harms their employees, proving the point: by shutting down public transportation during late evening and early morning hours, we are doing a disservice to the hard working men and women who do not have “9-to-5” jobs.  If we want to be regarded as a vibrant city, and if we care about the people who work hard to make that happen, we need to offer them the convenience and dignity of 24/7 transit service.

Once upon a time that was understood, at least in song. "Now all night long Charley rides through the tunnels Saying, 'What will become of me? How can I afford to see My sister in Chelsea Or my cousin in Roxbury?'" (But did he ever return, no he never returned ...)

There's a lot more in the Politico article, including the ferroequinologist fine point about how the door trap and step-box configuration required for trains calling both at floor-level and street-height platforms slows loading and unloading at stations with street-height platforms.

SPLICE THE MAIN BRACE!

Mid-American Conference football may well be a money suck, and yet the successes come often enough that the boosters want to keep playing, even if it is on school nights.

Consider Eastern Michigan, where there is neither money for academics nor for sports.  But then there's the early-season surprise where the Hurons, er, Eagles without color (to distinguish them from the Marquette Warriors, er, Golden Eagles) kick a field goal and walk out of West Lafayette with a win.

A few weeks later, it's Purdue beating Ohio State, changing the title conversation in the Big Ten's Big Two plus MSU plus the refugees from the east coast division.

Now word reaches Cold Spring Shops headquarters of the Boneyard Flag hoisted in Provo, Utah.  "The Huskies had five sacks, eight tackles for loss, and created a key turnover in the game's final two minutes to edge [Brigham young] 7-6 on Saturday. Northern Illinois won despite totaling just 204 yards on offense and averaging 3.6 yards per play."  A few weeks ago, it was Brigham Young exposing Wisconsin in Madison, however Wisconsin remained among the high-ranked teams until yesterday, when Northwestern did what it often does to Wisconsin in Evanston.

Because some forty thousand Brigham Young fans were present for the Northern Illinois victory, the Mid-American continues to satisfy the attendance requirements for continued Division I (or whatever they call it these days) status.

And when Northern Illinois, or any other Mid-American team, does better against a common opponent than a Big Ten team does, the people in Knute Rockne's backyard who want to keep offering football, even on a school night, will suggest there is enough success given the constraints so as to not abandon the enterprise.

THE OLDEST, DEEPEST STATE.

Yes, the United State is a Constitutional republic of long standing, and yet, long before the Framers envisioned the Electoral College, there was the College of Cardinals in conclave assembled to elect popes.

It is not the case that the Electoral College was inspired by the College of Cardinals.

And yet, the cardinals, and the Vatican bureaucracy, and influential Italian families, could probably teach secular politicians, even Chicago politicians of the Irish Catholic persuasion, a few things.

Even if on occasion the Vatican came up with some clinkers, such as selling indulgences to build St. Peter's and losing Germany in the bargain.

That's an Andrew Greeley line, and he's back in Book Review N^o. 31, along with Sean Cardinal Cronin, auxiliary bishop John Blackwood Ryan, and some of the North Wabash Irregulars.  They're not finding missing L trains or murders covered up for a half century, rather they're caught up in the ultimate palace intrigue in White Smoke: A Novel About the Next Papal Conclave.

It's part a wish for the papacy to come.  The book appears in the middle 1990s.  Pope John Paul II serves for another ten years in real life, to be replaced first by a German cardinal and then an Argentine.  Whether those elections reflected the changes Reverend Greeley desired (and used his characters to express) or not I cannot say.  There are some interesting observations about Catholicism, and I suspect more than a little questioning of church doctrine on celibacy, chastity, and poverty.

It's part about reconciliation (the domestic discord of two secular protagonists serving as an allegory for Humanity, Sinning, yet Forgiven) and part current affairs (sex scandals and bad investments.)

The machinations of church politicians?  We have true believers, page 149.  "They are not very bright ... They will overreach."  There are cover-ups, page 203.  "For too many centuries we have hidden the truth in the name of protecting the Church.  That has corrupted us."  There are partial revelations of potentially disqualifying information, page 245.  "There is apparently no trickery too vile, too dishonest, too evil for his opponents."  It's a front-runner for the papacy being slimed.  There's media influence, page 304.  "Turner Broadcasting Systems and all affiliates will do everything possible to drive you from public office and hound you out of the company of decent, civilized human beings."  That's after a CNN reporter is kidnapped.  Read the book for the details.

And yet, the Roman Catholic Church carries on (yes, sans Moscow, sans Constantinople, sans Germany, sans Canterbury) as it has for well over a thousand years.  As long as the priests and the assorted Higher Ranks minister to the congregants, it is likely to continue to carry on.  The extension to secular life and secular orders, such as the governance structures of the United States, remain as an exercise.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

NO SALAD BOWL, NO SPRING WATER.

It's been what, two months since the conclusion of the O Scale convention in Rockville, Maryland, and a week since the Milwaukee Brewers season ended.  Perhaps that's an opportunity for a Performance and Practice featuring the operation of the Capitol Limited, the food having already been evaluated and found edible but a step backwards.

The Capitol still maintains a business-friendly westbound schedule, with a late afternoon departure from Washington, a midnight arrival, if all is going well, at Pittsburgh, and an early morning arrival into Chicago.  Passengers connecting from Pennsylvania points west of Philadelphia have a longish layover between the one day train and the Capitol.  Passengers from New York, Newark, Trenton, or Philadelphia can probably shorten their journey by catching one of the regional or Acela trains along the Northeast Corridor.

Illustrations below the jump.

HAVING FUN IS PROBLEMATIC.

One of the events at Milwaukee's German Fest this year was the Stihl Timbersports competition.

It seems like a logical event for a German company (the alpha codes describing the various products reflect the German names of the power tools) in Wisconsin in the summer, where losing the log-rolling competition involves a cooling dip.

But I sat in on some of the competition, which involves cutting within the lines (that's not so easy when your tool is axe or chain-saw and your work piece is an eighteen inch log and you're racing another logger and the clock) and had some time to rest and reflect.

That's always dangerous, even for a retired academic.  Events sponsored by beer companies.  Prizes include Ram pickup trucks.  Power tools.  Gasoline.  Flannel shirts.  Got me thinking whether some of my onetime colleagues would be put off by the entire endeavor.  That's quite likely, but I never expected the university or the economics department to entertain me.  I'm capable of that on my own, thank you very much.

But I also had time to reflect on whether there would be people working in culture studies or the like that might find the endeavor wrong in some basic way.  Yup.  (I read these sites so you don't have to!)

I may have chopped out a particularly egregious example of a possible anathema on timber sports, but what the heck?

The surface level attempts of the outdoor industry to grapple with equity and diversity is leading to further silencing, erasure, and exclusion. The problem is that most people at the top in the industry like to stick with safe words like “inclusion,” “diversity,” and “equity.” And they want to define these words themselves without addressing the root cause: the commitment to the construct of Whiteness, and the pervasiveness of White supremacy culture in our businesses, and the spaces in which we organize.

Practicing anti-racism in our workplaces, at festivals, at community gatherings, at home, even at our favorite national parks is key to creating a safer community for all because the violence of racism does not disappear in the woods or mountains. It’s there in our conversations, in our actions, and in our beliefs. The unintentional racism of the outdoor industry is just as hostile as the racism of the people who are lighting their Nikes on fire. We need to make visible how we White people have been conditioned from living in a White supremacist culture. Without examining our patterns, assumptions, beliefs, and actions, we will not achieve the authentic community that we claim to want and say we are all about.

That's about people who go walking or mountain biking or climbing in the national parks and other upscale, quiet retreats. No chain saws or pickup trucks necessary, and yet going to the woods to play is somehow privilege.  Sad!

And having competitions for women?  Perhaps it's all about the money, or perhaps it's being patronizing.  Seriously.

When I began to explore and understand how women managed to create a loud voice in the industry and mobilize change, I soon realized that their movement towards equity was accompanied by statistics that happen to be in their favor. In one of the panels led by some of the women who have been responsible for the recent changes, one topic that was raised involved the effort to cater to women who wore sizes 14 and up. It was openly shared that 67% of the female population in U.S. consisted of such type of consumers. I don't doubt that the women leaders on the panel believe that there should be equity in catering to these consumers, and that they truly want to create change, although I question why it took them a long time in the first place to finally include a line of products that cater to this group of women. Having said that, I must give credit to one company at the panel: Columbia. Columbia is one of the very few companies that has been catering to the plus size communities long before women empowerment became the biggest buzz word in the outdoor industry.

As I continued to attend the panels that addressed the issue of women empowerment, it became more obvious that the efforts made by companies were mainly driven by the fact that they benefit financially from catering to the marginalized segment of the market; hence, the point being, don't fool yourself into thinking these efforts are being done out of morality or altruism alone. Ultimately, it's the shift in the makeup of consumers that created the motivation for companies to finally give in as doing so translates into yet again accruing more wealth for themselves.

Put another way, a business that wants to discriminate in employment or in customer base has to pay a price for its discrimination.  That's messy, yes, but less messy than letting the angry voices in Grievance Studies dictate what is permissible, either in the marketing of outdoor wear or in the conduct of logging competitions.

RULES WRITTEN IN BLOOD.

At first it was great fun.  Indoor work, no heavy lifting, and piece rates that were generous by the standards of the day, particularly if you put a fine tip on your paint brush by licking it.  And the factory dust sparkled in your hair, and the boss didn't make an issue of you using scrap paint at the end of the week for nail polish, which lit up even in dim dance halls.

Then Mollie's teeth started falling out.  Grace ached too much to be able to dance.  Helen suddenly died.  Thus the travails of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, expertly researched by Kate Moore and material for a somber Book Review N^o. 30.

Ms Moore's focus is on the story of the women themselves, who painted luminescent dials for clock and watch faces useful for the war effort and perhaps frustrating for the insomniac who now easily sees what hour of the night it is.  Some died without any recourse from their employer or state assistance, some won their lawsuits, some gave birth to children who might have been adversely affected, some never bore children; a few lived a long time, albeit sometimes saved by radical surgery.

The policy dimensions of their story are instructive.  One New Jersey case dismissed a suit against the United States Radium Company noting, "Today, industrial methods which the [company] then employed would not be merely negligent but criminal.  But it should be carefully noted that this case must be decided on the facts as they existed in the light of the knowledge of 1917." (Page 306).  That is, judging past behavior on the basis of current standards, when, in 1917 radium-laced water was still on sale as a health tonic, and x-ray machines were common in shoe stores, effectively becomes an ex post facto law.  Subsequent lawsuits turned out more favorably for the surviving women, although in many cases, the awards simply covered escalating expenses for treatment or for the loss of income.

Subsequently, chemists and physicists figured out that radium is in the same column of Mendeleyev's periodic table as calcium, and the solid material in bone is calcium phosphate.  Radium itself is dangerous stuff: it has a half-life of 1600 years yet it decays to polonium, an isotope that has a much shorter half-life.  Thus, physicist Glenn Seaborg insisted on much more careful protections for Manhattan Project workers refining plutonium: likely a very good thing, for had plutonium dust blown around bomb factories the way radium dust continued to blow around dial-painting factories, the U.S. atomic bomb project might have unintentionally killed more U.S. citizens than the Japanese deliberately killed by the bombings.  A few years later, the presence of strontium isotopes after atmospheric bomb tests combined with the recognition that strontium is below calcium and above radium in the light metals column of the periodic table might have led to the passage of the ban on atmospheric nuclear tests.  It appears that received wisdom these days is that the natural background radioactivity of the human body ought not be augmented.  Thus, Ms Moore concludes, the radium girls did not die in vain.

All the same, the painting of watch dials with radium compounds continued, perhaps no longer with camel-hair brushes and certainly not with anybody licking brushes to a fine point: and yet, Ottawa, Illinois, one of the three major sites for dial painting, remains dangerous today, and that might not always be well understood by people moving into town.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

WELL, GOOD.

Jay Cost, "Progressives Suddenly Sound Like Constitutionalists."  Not, he notes, out of any sudden rediscovery of the wisdom of the Framers, but wasn't the point of enumerated, limited, and separated powers to prevent tyranny by a majority?

That's likely not what devotees of Governance by Wise Experts are thinking.

I doubt we shall see any “strange new respect” coming from progressives for our constitutional regime. Indeed, modern progressivism’s defining methodology is that it wants to do away with much of our old system of governance. This is as central to the ideology as the desire to improve the welfare of the common man (who were the primary concern of the Jacksonian Democrats, who were extremely sensitive to violations of the constitutional order). Rather, I expect progressives, for now, will not connect the dots between their current frustrations with being out of power and the virtues of a constitutional system that limits the powers of majorities. But once return to political power, they will declare that the perfect order has once again arrived.

That's what makes judicial review valuable. Plus Militant Normals who vote.

YE WHO NOW WILL BLESS THE POOR, SHALL YOURSELF FIND BLESSING.

The Canadian Pacific Holiday Train will be making its annual tour, calling at several State Line locations.

Sunday, December 2:  Pingree Grove, 9.45 am; Byron, 12.45 pm; and Savanna, 3.15 pm; all in Illinois.

Thursday, December 6: Bensenville, 3.15 pm; Gurnee, 5.50 pm; in Illinois.  Sturtevant, 7.20 pm; Milwaukee, 8.35 pm; in Wisconsin.

The train will be on the Route of the Hiawathas on December 7, calling at Wauwatosa, Hartland, Oconomowoc, Watertown, and Columbus, with further calls along the LaCrosse and Milwaukee Division on December 8.

There is still hidden misery in the United States, and it's possible to see some of it from the tracks.  The point of running the Holiday Train is to help reduce food insecurity in communities along the line.  The entertainment is incidental to that mission, and the performers get it.

BEYOND FOXCONN.

Illinois is not a good place to do business.  Wisconsin is, and there are signs of extensive construction going on in Kenosha and Racine counties west of The Milwaukee Road and east of Interstate 94.  Some of this is Foxconn related work, and some of it appears to be logistics and light manufacturing.  I'd feel better if some of the industrial plants hard by the tracks had spur tracks and loading docks suitable for box cars, one of these days the logistics model based on 53 foot containers and overtired truckers is going to fail.

Wisconsin, however, is among the leading states for new jobs added in manufacturing.  Now comes Komatsu, the Milwaukee successor to Harnischfeger and Bucyrus-Erie, moving its offices and manufacturing plant to lakefront property.

Komatsu Mining Corp. will build a $285 million headquarters and manufacturing campus along Milwaukee’s harbor, creating 443 jobs.

It would cover 54 acres on the waterside Solvay Coke property on East Greenfield Avenue, with 2.5 million square feet of offices, manufacturing and research and robotics labs, according to Thursday’s announcements from the company and state of Wisconsin. Komatsu would grow to about 1,000 full-time jobs in the Milwaukee area through the project.

The old coke works is a brownfield site, likely to require extensive cleanup before even a hoist factory and offices are built there. As far as the job creation, well, some of that is a reallocation of work from elsewhere.

The company earlier this year renewed its labor contract with the local United Steelworkers union. Since that time, it has increased hiring and transferred more manufacturing operations to its Milwaukee headquarters facility from China. Komatsu also decided the Milwaukee plant will produce the company’s first P&H 4800XPC, which is the largest mining shovel Komatsu has ever made. Engineers in Milwaukee designed that shovel.

“We are preserving existing jobs, laying the groundwork for new employment opportunities, investing in the workforce of tomorrow, and helping attract talent to the area,” said John Koetz, president - Surface Mining at Komatsu Mining.

Komatsu’s project marks another major manufacturing development for southeast Wisconsin. Past deals of this scale have been in Racine County with Foxconn Technology Group, or Kenosha County with gummy-bear maker Haribo. The Komatsu announcement is just south of downtown in Milwaukee, where Mayor Barrett has been urging companies to bring more manufacturing jobs.

Bucyrus-Erie used to make some huge draglines, which had to be shipped to the pit in pieces, assembled on-site, and they generally were dismantled afterwards.

It's not just liquid crystal displays, steam shovels (sorry if that's archaic these days) and Gummi Bears.  The financial sector is doing well as well.  We saw Northwestern Mutual's new headquarters during the summer (as well as the bears) and BMO Harris Bank (or whatever they trade as these days, I lose track) have more offices taking shape, along the car line.

That's the southwest corner of Milwaukee Street at Wells.  Northbound streetcars pass this way.  Years ago, the Fourteen line streetcars and trackless trolleys used this street, in both direction.

There's so much new construction that the weather-forecasting flame of the Milwaukee Gas Light Company office tower is almost obscured.

Conveniently, there was neither a change in the weather, nor in the immediate future, rain or snow, permitting the blue (meaning no change) flame with some gold trim, conveniently Milwaukee Brewer colors.  We'll be watching the BMO bank and Northwestern Mutual office towers for lead times.

Toward the end of the First Era of American Greatness, that tower took less than a year to build and occupy, including working around the property of a tavern that was in foreclosure, and building basement vaults under the sidewalks.

SPONTANEOUS ORDER TRUMPS SOCIAL ENGINEERING.

I've been complaining about this for years.

The landscape architects at Northern Illinois University have this silly idea that people should walk on sidewalks, even if the sidewalks are laid out with a view toward looking pretty on a rendering than actually being where they are useful. So people take the most direct route. In an attempt to steer people onto the sidewalks and give the grass a chance to get started, the groundskeepers have placed sawhorse barriers to obstruct some of the more useful shortcuts, and their willing accomplices in the English department's building have posted signs exhorting people to use the sidewalks. As. If. Perhaps one of these years the groundskeepers will opt to lay some sidewalks where people will use them.

The pedestrians, predictably, lay out the minimal paths, and the landscape architects supervise the installation of bushes or fences to make people Go The Approved Way.

The good news is, even the technocracy-friendly Guardian sees the value of emergence, or, as they have it, desire paths.

Desire paths have been described as illustrating “the tension between the native and the built environment and our relationship to them”. Because they often form in areas where there are no pavements, they can be seen to “indicate [the] yearning” of those wishing to walk, a way for “city dwellers to ‘write back’ to city planners, giving feedback with their feet”.

But as well as revealing the path of least resistance, they can also reveal where people refuse to tread. If you’ve been walking the same route for years, an itchy-footed urge to go off-piste, even just a few metres, is probably something you’ll identify with. It’s this idea that led one academic journal to describe them as a record of “civil disobedience”.

Rather than dismiss or even chastise the naughty pedestrian by placing fences or railings to block off “illicit” wanderings, some planners work to incorporate them into urban environments. This chimes with the thinking of Jane Jacobs, an advocate of configuring cities around desire lines, who said: “There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them … that we must fit our plans.”

Too often, though, town infrastructure is all about the lines put on paper in something resembling an orderly fashion, whether they're useful or not.

RUNNING BEYOND THE WIRES.

Railroads have experimented with such technologies for a long time.  The tri-power locomotives of the 1930s capable of drawing power from an overhead wire, or running on batteries in areas where neither wires nor combustion were desirable, or running on diesel and recharging the batteries for extended range were an early version.  The technology of Hamburg's plug-in trackless trolley is also present in Milwaukee's new streetcar, which runs on batteries on short stretches of its line.

Now comes Stadler's Flirt Akku multiple-unit car, which is capable of venturing far from the overhead wire.

The traction equipment and the most important mechanical components are the same as are used on conventional Flirt EMUs, but the powertrain has been rebuilt and the battery installed. ‘This concept has allowed us to significantly reduce the development and approval times, and to ensure a high level of reliability’, said Steffen Obst, Head of Sales at Stadler Germany, adding that he hoped the Flirt Akku could help to reduce or eliminate emissions and encourage more people to travel by train.

The unit has a maximum speed of 140 km/h and range of 80 km in battery mode. The battery can be charged from the overhead electrification, from a fixed shore supply at termini and from regenerated braking energy. The three-car unit has 154 seats and capacity of 310 passengers, and is quieter than a comparable diesel vehicle.

The design is ready for production, and Stadler estimates that Flirt Akku units could be used to operate 80% of the non-electrified routes in Germany. It also sees opportunities for the Flirt Akku in Austria, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and other countries with a significant amount of non-electrified routes.

The concept has potential Stateside, for instance in extending high-density light rail services past the end of electrification, or, perhaps, as a way of getting South Shore Line commuter service from Chicago to Valparaiso without installing the overhead wires between State Line and Valparaiso.

THE EMPTINESS OF CULTURAL STUDIES.

A defender of Business as Usual in the academy trading under the perhaps prophetic handle of Ozymandias attempts to defend the core principles of culture studies that the recent grievance studies hoaxes brought to light.  It's mostly lame stuff.  Consider this.

Imagine I published a paper in a theology journal arguing that it was a good idea to adopt a certain liturgy because it would help people praise God. Later, I announced that this was a hoax paper which proves that theology as a discipline celebrates delusional thinking. Certainly, many people believe that theism is delusional. But the ‘hoax’ paper doesn’t address the subject at all. All it proves is that you can publish papers in theology journals which work from the premise that God exists, which is also provable by (for example) picking up any theology journal and looking at the table of contents.

What relevance that passage has to the physiology or psychology of fat studies (my conjecture: culture-studies types created fat studies as a way to avoid studying physiology or psychology) escapes me.

It gets better.  The hoaxers switched a few words out in a passage from Mein Kampf.  Look on Ozymandias's works, and despair.

See, if you listen to Nazis in order to figure out how to educate people into being Nazis, that’s bad. But that does not mean that it is somehow wrong for a social work journal to ever talk about the concepts of culture change, education, and listening. There is nothing wrong with culture change, education, and listening as long as you don’t use them as tools to help you kill seventeen million people.

I suppose it's a good thing "cultural Marxism" is a misleading description.

Most of what gets lumped under the heading of cultural Marxism is really about personal choices about lifestyle or belief, not politics. But "political correctness" frequently tumbles over into actual attempts to suppress expression, which is indeed worrying. And the conspiracists have a Frankfurt School theorist to blame for that: Herbert Marcuse.

Marcuse, who after World War II taught at major American universities such as Columbia and Harvard, and who is thus often fingered as the Typhoid Mary of cultural Marxism in America, advocated the suppression of nonleftist ideas. "Repressive tolerance," his paradoxical phrase, suggested that allowing sinister right-of-center ideas to spread was not true intellectual tolerance but its enemy.

Marcuse was hardly the first to come up with a justification for silencing one's political foes. "Repressive tolerance" is merely a contextual restatement of the ancient attitude that only true, appropriate, and acceptable ideas should be freely expressed. Marcuse stated his terrible notion with the kind of tribute vice pays to virtue, claiming the ideas he wanted suppressed made true tolerance impossible. But Marcuse didn't invent the idea that "error has no rights"—the very traditional Catholic Church did. Yes, he wickedly promoted "the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care," but that doesn't mean he's to blame for everyone who now wants enforced political correctness.

The commitment on the part of today's progressive undergrads to suppressing distasteful speech comes not from a deep understanding of some larger intellectual tradition with a goal of world domination but from a simple (if mistaken) calculus about the morality of hurting people. As frustrating as this attitude can be to civil libertarians, many students genuinely believe that certain expressions seen as hostile to oppressed minorities either directly cause actionable harm to those people or unjustly contribute to an overall atmosphere of danger for them.

Put another way, culture change, education, and selective listening (or hectoring and condescending and calling it "dialogue") are tools to help the Diversity Lobby silence millions of people.

If you care about logic, none of it makes sense.

HE FIGHTS.

I'll devote a short Book Review N^o. 29 to Kurt Schlichter's Militant Normals: How Regular Americans are Rebelling Against the Elite to Reclaim Our Democracy.

It's difficult to distinguish an "elite" from "anyone else" and public intellectuals with, shall we say, more conventional credentials have previously struggled with the same theme.

Perhaps it is less important to attempt to distinguish, particularly in the way Mr Schlichter does (yes, people who put on airs and give their spawn odd, androgynous names are off-putting) Rulers from Ruled, and more important to count the ways in which the Rulers have messed up.

Page 92:

Progressivism, a disease of the Elite, is notorious for its preference for governing through the wisdom of detached, neutral experts who will be guided solely by the best of science and philosophy.  These great minds will not be subject to the passions and prejudices of lesser men and women.  Their fact-based, logical rule will usher in a new age of enlightened governance.

And they've been trying to impose a regime of rule by experts, with varying levels of intensity, since the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century, and everything's gone great since.

Wait, what?

Sorry, no, not since Plato, and it's impossible for experts to govern so wisely anyway.

NEVER ENOUGH TIME TO DO IT RIGHT, PLENTY OF TIME TO DO IT OVER.

Thanks to the reluctance of Springfield politicians to pass a budget (or do anything else, other than raise taxes) for a year or two, the rebuilding of the long-abused Stevens Building, formerly home to anthropology offices and the theaters, was on hold for a year or two.  The university is about to resume use of the building, but troubles remain.

The state-funded project was initiated in 2014 but was repeatedly halted until completion this past August. The space was increased by 55 percent to 106,000 square feet, according to a previous Northern Star article.

Anahi Mondragon, junior theatre arts major and design technician with the School of Theatre and Dance, said there are many problems in the day-to-day use of the scene shop and performance spaces.

“The only theater space that had anything done to it was the Black Box,” Mondragon said. “We have these old theater chairs, which are super [crappy] and moldy; they were not renovated, and they were not upgraded in any way, so we’re still working with a lot of old stuff in that respect.”

Mondragon said most of the issues have been centered around the O’Connell Theater, which remains untouched after renovations were said to be done. She also said technicians have continued efforts, including tearing up and reinstalling stage flooring, patching holes in the ceiling and walls, getting rid of raccoons and removing mold.

Meanwhile, there's a new video board in the money-losing convocation center.

Somehow, do-it-yourself is the way they roll in the theater department.  "Kevin Nedberg, scene shop supervisor and assistant technical director of design and technology within the School of Theatre and Dance, said the work done on the floor could easily cost $10,000 if done by the original contractors. He said the scene shop’s reinstallation estimates $5,000 in comparison."

On top of everything else, there's a buddy system for people working late on their sets.  "[Nedberg] said he feels obligated to escort technicians to their vehicles in teams of two due to recent safety concerns on campus." In part that's because there's no money to keep the sidewalk and parking lot lighting in a state of good repair.

BET ON EMERGENCE.

George Will offers a Trenchant Observation About Many Things in the course of taking stock of the baseball season.  "The itch to fix complex systems often underestimates the ability of markets, broadly understood, to respond and adapt to incentives."

Baseball is broken, though, as the Cubs neither got to the World Series nor reverted to being lovable losers.  (Paging Kurt Schlichter: how many Fredocons are Cub fans?)  Let us count the ways:

Today’s all-or-nothing baseball is too one-dimensional. There are too many strikeouts — for the first time in history, more than hits, a lot more. And the number is increasing for the 13th consecutive season. Also, too many of the hits are homeruns. It was imprecise for Crash Davis (Kevin Costner’s character in Bull Durham) to say that strikeouts are “fascist,” but he was right that they are “boring,” at least in excessive quantities. So are home runs (and caviar, and everything else except martinis). In about one-third of today’s at-bats, the ball is not put in play (home-run balls are put in the seats). Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci notes that by the end of June there were “more strikeouts in half a season than there were in the entire 1980 season.” And “on average, you have to wait [3 minutes and 45 seconds] between balls put in play — 41 seconds longer between movement than 20 years ago.” Steals (hence pitchouts), sacrifice bunts, hit-and-run plays — interesting things for fans — are becoming rarer.

This is not the main reason attendance is down. The weather is: In 35 April games, the temperature was below 40; in the entire 2017 season, only one. But the all-or-nothing style is not helping, and it is encouraged by the exponential increase in the use of defensive shifts — from 2,357 in 2011 to a projected 36,000 this season.

Yes, and all those April postponements might have contributed to the Cubs wearing out as September wore on.  Let's focus on those things that are making the game boring.

[S]hifts cause pitchers to target a particular part of the plate in order to increase the probability that the batter will hit into the shift. This results in more walks, which batters like because high on-base percentages are rewarded: Today, baseball’s compensation system is an incentive for walks, and for equanimity about striking out, if home runs are frequent.

What baseball people call “analytics,” and less-scientific people call information, has produced all this: Particular hitters have particular tendencies; defenses adjust accordingly. Now, let us, as the lawyers say, stipulate that more information is always better than less. But for the moment, information is making offense anemic. So, there is a proposal afoot — this is fascism — to ban shifts, to say there must be two infielders on either side of second base, or even that as the pitch is delivered all infielders must be on the infield dirt. This would leave some, but much less, ability to manage defenses. It would, however, short-circuit market-like adjustments.

Incessant radical shifting will persist until it is moderated by demand summoning a supply of some Rod Carew-like hitters. A Hall of Famer, Carew was a magician who wielded a bat like a wand, spraying hits hither and yon, like Wee Willie (“Hit ’em where they ain’t”) Keeler. The market is severely meritocratic, so some hitters who cannot modify their tendencies and learn to discourage shifts by hitting away from them might need to consider different careers.

Yes, or learn how to spoil pitches that are likely to be hit into the shift, which might be a way of inducing a mistake as the pitch count mounts, or of working the pitcher for the walk.

THIS IS GOING TO HURT ME MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU.

That's the rationale parents used to offer their kids just before a spanking.

Our President thinks he can flip the script.  "[T]here is no indication that Trump is worried about whether his tariffs could backfire against the American economy."

Maybe the better metaphor is masochists spanking each other?

Trump's defenders are quick to point out that China is feeling the squeeze of tariffs too—and they're right. But thinking about a trade war as something that one side wins and the other side loses is really not the proper framing.  Both sides lose. The competition is over who loses worse.

That's because trade makes both sides better off. Even if America "wins" the trade war, it's not hard to see how hurting China will end up hurting America in the long run. Weakening the world's two biggest economies isn't really a great strategy for continued global growth, especially considering how interwoven the two nations' economies are.

Given those domestic and global economic realities, it's difficult to understand Trump's desire for more tariff-caused suffering as anything other than sadistic.

Yes, the negotiators are taking care of the more vocal rent-seekers such as automobile and agricultural interests. Boat-builders? Collateral damage.

Rob Parmentier has weathered some rough times in the boat building business, but the trade wars with China, Europe, Canada and Mexico have shaken him to the core.

“It’s been catastrophic,” said Parmentier, president and CEO of Marquis-Larson Boat Group, which builds Carver yachts in Pulaski.

The first “hand grenade,” as Parmentier described it, was a 25 percent tariff the European Union placed this year on boats built in the U.S., along with scores of other products including Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Then there was a 10 percent tariff slapped on boats shipped to Canada, along with price increases up to 40 percent on boat building materials.

It’s sent a shock wave through U.S. boat manufacturers.

“We’ve had a lot of order cancellations. Canada and Europe have essentially stopped buying boats,” Parmentier said.

The Marquis-Larson powerboats are small enough to be trucked to Green Bay, or, essentially, anywhere on the inland or sea coasts, for delivery.  There are lots of other things that are relatively small and easy to ship, and they're being hammered as well.

Across America’s heartland, small and midsize manufacturers are reeling from higher costs and lost business attributed to a breakdown in foreign trade.

While some have benefited, others have been hammered by rising tariffs — a tax on imported or exported goods — on products including boats, electronics, sporting goods, bourbon and baby cribs, to name a few.

Yes, and the Chinese now have the right to pay higher prices for domestically sourced ginseng bourbon.

The tariffs that China recently placed on American ginseng and bourbon, for example, have clobbered Great Northern Distilling, in Plover, which makes ginseng-infused bourbon.

It's cost the company 25 percent of its sales.

"All of the buyers have cold feet now. They've said until this gets resolved, they're not placing an order," said Brian Cummins, co-founder of the distillery, which has 11 employees.

Eleven workers here, eleven workers there, a hundred boat-builders someplace else, it starts to add up.

TWELVE YEARS TO SAVE THE PLANET.

Again, notes Craig Newmark.

Yup.  We shouldn't even be here.  At least that's what the wizards of smart tried to tell me back in 1970.

IT'S STILL A GAME OF PRETEND.

James Kunstler, no Tory, knows bunk when he sees it.

The political Left has taken its lessons in the abuse of language straight from the campus “post-structuralist” workshops, where novelties of narcissism get churned out by striving grad students in the ceaseless pursuit of cutting edge prestige (and academic career advancement). The game is to produce a never-ending chain of self-referential, status-enhancing world-views as a replacement for consensual reality. The more “marginalized” one can claim to be, the more deserving of high status (including tenure, grants for attending echo-chamber conferences and symposia, and a claque of attending assistants to actually teach those pain-in-the-ass classes). The goal is to get to feel special, and especially deserving of special privileges based on special grievances.

The net effect is to destroy whatever remains of an American common culture, to divide and conquer the polity in the hope that society might advance into a state with no rules and no boundaries — except for whatever capricious actions the “Progressive” authorities might choose, based on how they feel at any particular time. It must be obvious that this all comes down to a vicious sort of sentimentality.

Yup.  Experiments against reality hurt real people.

OPEN THE GARDEN OF INTELLECTUAL THINKERS.

Scott Adams's Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter elaborates on the thinking he used to anticipate Donald Trump's first securing the Republican nomination, then framing things in a way that even his gaffes and his crudity helped him nail down the necessary electoral votes.

"Persuasion" is a loaded term, I'll argue in Book Review N^o. 28, one that is in a bad odor in Intellectual Circles, this goes at least as far back as Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders, and it might stink of hucksters and carny barkers.  It's a phenomenon that calls for broader understanding, though, particularly in light of all the vulgar behavioral economics work that gets Supposedly Intelligent People all huffy about the lousy decision-making propensities of everyone else.

First pro tip: an intellectual thinker might be more diplomatic than using a term like "deplorable."

There is, however, merit in understanding the logic of persuasion.  Mr Adams suggests that the craft of behavioral science, which may or may not include training hypnotists, has a lot to offer in understanding human motivation, and in influencing behavior.

Second pro tip:  a leader might be more effective at getting things done by focusing effort on the main prize, thus reducing caviling over niggling details, leading either to agreement on the substance, or on finding more than one way for things to do well.  Mr Adams sketches these ideas as "two ways to win, no way to lose" and "high ground maneuver," and perhaps he'd like to persuade you to buy his other business strategy books.

At the same time, some of the more effective persuasive techniques he details, and credits Our President with using, are really cleverly packaged logical fallacies.

Consider "many people are saying."  Our President uses that in campaign rallies.  Journalists like to trot it out as a way of being controversial without revealing their own biases.  That's the ad populum fallacy.  Your Mom had the perfect counter for that: "and if all the other kids decided to jump off bridges ..."  If there is one message people ought to take from Win Bigly, it is that complex, nuanced, and technically correct responses to simple errors put people to sleep.  Sorry, I might have just done that myself.

Third pro tip: a leader ought come up with a pithy and correct response.  OK, that's what Mr Adams sells as Persuasion Tips 28 and 29 (page 201).

Then consider "If you frequently hear that a thing is true, it biases you to think that there might be something to it" from page 199.  Catbert, may I introduce Herr Göbbels.  OK, that's a loser, Godwin at one remove.  Repetition is a technique anyone can use: perhaps the message of Win Bigly is that finding something simple, effective, and plausible to respond to something simple, effective, and implausible trumps any attempt to roll out complex, nuanced, and technically correct responses.  Plus it might keep people awake.

It gets more complicated.  Sometimes the easy way to persuade is to deflect and change the subject: for instance, when Chris Cuomo invited candidate Trump either to criticize the Pope or criticize capitalism, the candidate suggested the existence of Islamic State plans to sack Rome and behead the Pope, thus burying any complex, nuanced, and technically correct responses to the struggle between God and Mammon for the balance of the news cycle.  But that might not be as effective as granting part of the criticism, then noting that it's a learning opportunity.  Consider broken smart 'phones or Tylenol tampering or a search for improved practices.

But again, there's that balance between simple and convincing, contrasted with complex and technically correct.

Final pro tip: the intellectual thinkers, dear reader, might be too bogged down in the subtleties of their gardens -- whether as a pitchman for a product, or a politician stumping for votes, or as a scholar circulating a paper for peer review.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

BASEBALL WHILE THE SNOW FLIES.

The third weekend of October is one of the quarterly Gallery Night and Day events that sometimes feature railroad or industrial-themed programming at the Grohmann Museum.

So it was Friday last, with industrial photographer David Plowden, this time presenting portraits of workers at work, whether in the steel mills or on the waters or the rails, providing the programming.

The gallery event is scheduled long in advance; little did anyone know that it would coincide with a home opener of a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks, a concert at the Riverside Theater, an investiture for the local Lieutenancy of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem ... and baseball games with the World Series on the line.

Illustrations below the jump.

WHEN THE CARS WERE SERVICED AT COLD SPRING SHOPS.

Milwaukee's new streetcar will begin receiving passengers on 2 November.

That gives local historian John Gurda an opportunity to recall the cars of The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company.  "Eastern capitalists joined with local leaders to create the Milwaukee Street Railway Company, a full-fledged utility that was the first in America to provide electricity for lighting, power and transit from a single central station under a single corporate ownership." That central station also provided spent steam for central heating, thus The Milwaukee Light Heat and Traction Company.

Today's cars might be a civic asset, or they might be a boondoggle.

Although The Hop is thoroughly modern, it is undeniably a streetcar system, and that, to some vocal critics, is the height of absurdity. Why, they ask, are we resurrecting a system that our grandparents abandoned? Why go back to the rust-streaked past when the future promises us driverless cars?

Why? Because The Hop could be the down payment on a system that clears the city’s center of its automotive clutter and speeds residents to jobs, shopping, home and recreation as efficiently as the cars of the John I. Beggs era — while it promotes development and creates tax base.

Could it happen? It will be years before we know for certain whether The Hop will be more than a novelty for residents and a curiosity for visitors. Milwaukee lacks the congestion that has made light rail a necessity in New York, Chicago, and even Minneapolis, but that could change as downtown continues to blossom. In the meantime, the tracks are down, the cars are here, and the rides are free.

There isn't going to be enough parking space for those driverless cars, let alone a business model to cover the costs of providing enough cars.

The residential development might already be taking place.

Now known as the Underwriters Exchange Building, it will be renamed Street Car Flats, said developer Paul Dincin.

His firm, Chicago-based Catapult Real Estate Solutions LLC, plans to begin renovations in February.

The project will convert the nine-story underused office building, 828 N. Broadway, into 73 apartments, Dincin told the Journal Sentinel.

The icon of Our Lady of Sewer Socialists is next door at Old St. Mary's Church.

The contemporary cars will not have to deadhead to Cold Spring Shops on the west side for maintenance.

Some of the older Milwaukee streetcars are still in preservation, in Wisconsin, in Illinois, and in Maine.