Washington gives Chuck Nelson the boot

I like former Husky quarterbacks Brock and Damon Huard both very much, and am delighted to see Brock on ESPN, but I agree with Ted Miller that replacing Chuck Nelson with Damon Huard on the radio broadcasts is a bad idea (above and beyond the awful way it was apparently handled).

There is an old saying about what to do when things are not broken.

People I knew in Judy Thornton's class at UW

Readers who know me and also my old friend Ken Troske may have heard me tell a story about a small honors economics class - about 10 students - that Ken and I both took back in our undergraduate days at the University of Washington. The amazing fact about this class - amazing at least if you know both Ken and me - is that neither of us was the loudest person in the class nor the second loudest person in the class.

The loudest person was a fine fellow called Dan Shasteen, whose father sold aluminum siding in Hawaii and who was a great fan of Austrian economics in general and of Ludwig von Mises in particular. The second loudest person, and the motivation for this post, was called Nelson del Rio. I learned yesterday, by first reading the UW Economics Department's alumni newsletter and then following up on the "Celebration" awards ceremony page, that he has done quite well for himself indeed.

Congratulations to Nelson!

Obama at UM

Well, look what some clever person in the administration managed to do! President Obama is delivering the commencement address here at Michigan this spring. One hopes the additional donations this generates from enthusiastic democrat parents, students and alumni outweigh the donations lost from non-democrat parents, students and alumni plus the cost of all the additional security and such like.

It could be better. At Chicago, where I did my graduate degrees, they get professors who are also good lecturers to deliver a 20-minute mini-lecture about some aspect of their research that is of general interest at commencement. We had law professor Richard Epstein at one of my two graduations, as I recall. No actors, no comedians, no politicians and no pandering. Just the life of the mind. It warms my heart just thinking about it.

It could also be worse. At Washington, where I did my undergraduate degrees, the tradition was to have the president of the university give the commencement address. I think the president when I was there was called Gerberding. I am sure he must have had some exceptional talent for something or other, maybe PR or fund-raising, but he was not particularly talented at either public speaking or economic policy analysis. Nonetheless, the assembled graduating masses (and they are masses at UW) were treated to 30 minutes (or was it an hour, it sure seemed like it) about how "we" should do more to emulate Japanese industrial policy. Ooops.

Hat tip: Angela Wyse (on FB)

Addendum: official UM announcement

New improved Savery Hall

Savery Hall, the home of the economics department where I did my undergraduate work, has been remodeled.

It needed it when I was a student in the early 1980s so I can only imagine what it looked like when they finally got to it.

Budget cuts at the University of Washington

Here is the message that went out by email from University of Washington president Mark Emmert.

17 percent budget cuts over two years are tough when you can only get rid of tenure-track faculty, who are by a lot the main expense of running a university, by closing departments. I expect that the staff will take pretty severe hits and that tuition will go up by a lot. I also predict that too few administrators will be cut than is optimal.

UW is not that far below Michigan in world rankings of universities (though they have let their economics department slip since I was there as an undergraduate, they are kings in computer science, aeronautical engineering, medicine and other fields), there is no reason their tuition should not be similar to Michigan's.

As a Husky football season ticket holder, I like the bit at the end about the stadium - priorities!

History of food production: home and market

The Michigan library has an extensive collection of cookbooks and other items related to culinary history; the University of Washington library has an extensive (and very cool) collection of restaurant menus that you can look at on line.

Yum.