Year: 2018
A Rural Flavor of CoLA
As legislative bodies get rolling after the new year, we will hear a lot about cost of living and its impact on Americans, particularly “hardworking Americans.” Cost of living is not the sexiest political topic, but it is important because
Read MoreHome, Sheet Home
Not all home-field advantages are created equal. Some don’t even exist. Major-league baseball has a beloved quirk: no two ballparks are the same. Different ballparks have different sizes of outfields (e.g. the huge outfields in Detroit), different heights of outfield
Read MoreWe versus They
I’m one of those people who can barely understand lyrics to popular music. To mix metaphors, it’s as though I’m listening in a fog. Or, I can’t see through the noise. But recently some lyrics caught my attention. “Ants Go
Read MoreAdjuncts Go Marching
In theory, higher education is in crisis. In practice, don’t be alarmed. Higher education may indeed be in crisis, and for a variety of reasons, but one reason that gets a lot of attention is the hiring of faculty. Specifically,
Read MoreThe Rivals That Never Play
Professional and college football teams do not compete on the field, but they do compete at the state capitol. Just ask the taxpayers of Minnesota, who recently agreed to pay for two brand new football stadiums. The stadiums sit just
Read MorePoll Faulting
In “Poll Faulting: A Surprising Reason Why Preseason Polls Can Be Wrong,” I examined an unexpected reason for error in preseason polls. The article is data-driven, but casual fans can follow. It appeared on USCHO.com–please check it out here.
Read MoreOut of Realignment
In “Out of Realignment: Looking at Competitive Balance in College-Hockey Conferences,” I examined how the “new” conferences in college hockey stacked up in terms of past success, both recent and not-so-recent. It’s data-driven, but the casual fan can follow. The
Read MoreLeveling the Ice
In “Leveling the Ice: Looking at Parity in College Hockey’s National Tournament,” I analyzed the common perception (at least among fans of college hockey) that more and more teams are winning in the national tournament. It’s data-driven, but casual fans
Read MoreFor Fun: Local Flavor
When I’m somewhere with television, I like to watch cooking shows, even if not for typical reasons. And I don’t mean the traditional cooking shows, where a lady stands behind a countertop with 300 ingredients and seventy-eight bowls, with three
Read MoreRoughing It, Kinda
There was frost on the toilet seat. Not icicles, but frost—a micro-layer of crystalline sheen, the kind you can scrape off with a fingernail, but not a finger. But taking the time to scrape the frost off a seat in
Read MoreSuzy Homefaker
When my son was born, my wife and I decided that one of us should stay home with him. Because she makes more money than I ever did, I went from climbing the professional ladder to playing Chutes and Ladders.
Read MoreThe Rurality of Hunting: A Consequence of…Agriculture
You know the old joke: A man goes fishing, and his wife packs him a lunch. He comes back angry, saying that she forgot to pack the lunch. She says, “I packed it in your tackle box.” The caricature of
Read MoreThe Hidden Diversity of Rural America
The caricature of America includes a bunch of diverse metro areas strewn across an ethnic void of rural areas. The metros are oases of “culture” in the white-sand desert of Middle America. They’re islands of ethnicity in a sea of
Read MoreA Cashless Society? Not Out Here.
She trudged in the wet gravel, down the long driveway, in her shiny red galoshes. The dull red wagon rolled behind her, pressing tracks through the mud, its load of orange pumpkins quivering. The little ones bounced. As she approached
Read MoreWithin Reach: The Myth of Unaffordable Housing
Be careful, fair readers—the Internet is full of some pretty bizarre stuff. Some of that stuff comes from an outfit called the National Low Income Housing Coalition. It’s okay to view on your work computer, but it’s bizarre, nonetheless. The
Read MoreWhy All the Stoplights?
The light wasn’t turning. At least I was pretty sure, as the blizzard had spat snow on the red, yellow, and green circles, so the red light was more of a pink glow. The pastel pink seemed less commanding than
Read MoreFor Fun: The Super-Duper Market (An Ode to Grocery Stores)
My wife lies to me. “I’m going to the grocery store!” she says. She takes a list. She even comes home with food. But she doesn’t go to the grocery store. She goes to the supermarket. There’s a difference. Because
Read MoreFor Fun: The Rural Minimum
The logic behind minimum-wage laws can be baffling. Specifically, it ignores key differences between rural and urban areas. As I’ve written elsewhere, those differences include costs of living, but they also include, you know, how much work the workers do.
Read MoreLeft Right Between: The Myths of Self-Sufficiency and Collectivism
The last article presented a case against socialism in favor of cooperation. This article outlines how that cooperation can look. Specifically, it argues against self-sufficiency, and for communities somewhere between socialism and self-sufficiency, or between the political Left and Right.
Read MoreHumans Evolved to Share—When They Know Each Other.
The political Left routinely reminds us that humans are social animals, and that we evolved to share resources in egalitarian groups. Fair enough. However, the Left sometimes uses that evolutionary past to justify socialism. That’s quite the evolutionary leap. The
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