University of Chicago Saturday.

I dont think anyone knows that this isn't satire.
So Becker and Johnson have put together an interdisciplinary major that will be the first among American liberal arts colleges to combine intensive training in both blues and economics, its academic counterpart long known as "the dismal science."

"What is economics but the blues, man?" Johnson asks. "You talkin' about a man and a woman, and the return on investment of buyin' that woman a fur coat or a diamond ring when you consider her propensity for takin' her business out on the street--you know what I mean?"

"Precisely," says Becker, who came up with the concept of the undergraduate course of study while listening to a Jimmy Witherspoon song one night. "Spoon was singing 'Money's getting cheaper--prices getting steeper'," Becker recalls. "It reminded me of one of Milton Friedman's favorite gags--'Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon'. That always cracked me up."

R.I.P., Miltie.