crazy american policy bundles

and crazy Ron Paul, from motherjones.

some LTH roundup from today

• new szechuan
• spoon thai and some other thai with erik m. we have to go to spoon instead of sticky rice next time.
• spring world discussion including the secret mushroom menu

Threadless is amazing

Just when I think I am satisfied with a nice collection of fun tshirts comes along something that I don't think I can live without.

Great Neighborhood Restaurants

gmap mashup from LTH; complete text list

apsa: check.

This is a confirmation email to let you know that your 2008 Annual Meeting paper proposal has been received by APSA.

PROPOSAL TITLE: Unmasking the ECJ: National Governemnts, Appointment, and Strategic Justices

PAPER ABSTRACT: Rulings of the European Court of Justice have profoundly affected member states, national governments, and European citizens. The court by some accounts has seized power and overstepped its bounds, or by others, duly done its delegated duty. Almost always “the Court” is treated as an agent of the member-state principals. I argue that member states view not the full Court, but their individual appointed justice, as their agent – despite the court's mask of formalism and the secrecy afforded by its en banc decisions. I show that governments use their power of appointment as a measure of control over the ECJ. I propose a dynamic measure of justices’ preferences that exploits the fact that while justice-votes are unobserved, the organization of the court into panels (subsets) systematically reveals information about individual voting behavior. I show that justices are re-appointed or replaced as functions of information available to the national governments who appoint them. Finally, I explore the role that member state “observations” (briefs submitted to the court) play in justices' decisionmaking, and in terms of what national governments learn from tendering observations and then seeing the court’s ruling.

Submitted to the following divisions:
Div 14 Div. 14 - Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Societies
Div 11 Div. 11 - Comparative Politics

things to make

• green curry with chicken and eggplants
• prik khing with chicken or beef and longbeans
• leang soup with bamboo shoot, mushroom
• salad of cilantro, mint, tomato, mung bean sprouts, dried shrimp
• cabbage sprouts and tofu with oyster sauce
• a vegetable lasagna for the freezer (spinach, mushrooms, ricotta)
• smoked chicken tamales
• pan fried tofu with marsala cream sauce; salad of romaine, pomegranate, satsuma

things to make this week

• Yeast-raised cornbread
• curried celery root soup
• umbrella-cookies
• quick-fried yu choy & bekana with “brown” sauce
• assorted sweet potato things: ancho-honey; mashed with parmigiano
• garlic naan
• radish parathas

• vanilla-chocolate bread
• pumpkin mousse
• pecan tarts
• butternut squash soup

gobbblllllle

gobbblllllle
Originally uploaded by gay.goy.gourmet

When to refinance

via Mankiw

Principles of OS design

I can’t find a better excerpt than the one from /. :

Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way, even if it doesn't succeed all the time. Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way. You must conform regardless of the implications.

I haven’t yet used Gutsy on a desktop (or upgraded from Feisty on my MythTV), but it sounds like enough of their/gnome developers have finally used OS X to appreciate the “get out of the way” principles that largely drive Apple human interface design. Nowhere of course is it better distilled and applied than in Quicksilver (“Act Without Doing”)

Economists Explain the World, again

More wacky instrumental variables: is leaded gas the next tv-and-autism?

Goat curry

I haven’t made it yet but I certainly plan to soon.

OMG so annoying I agree!

Could the entire subfield of American politics please stop talking about the 77th Congress or the 103rd Congress and start talking about the 1941-42 Congress and the 1993-94 Congress and so forth? This would just make everybody's life easier. —Gelman.

Chicken Paprikás

I have been asked for my tasty chicken paprikás recipe. It's so simple a dish I cannot claim ownership – the one I learned from my grandfather is not really any different from June Meyer's excellent version here. I usually serve it with simple dumplings:

• two flour
• two eggs
• some water (half a cup? more?)

Mix in a bowl with enough water to make a medium-sticky dough. Using a large pot of well salted boiling water, cut dumplings with a spoon directly from the bowl (it will come off easily in the water). I usually do this in two or three batches, skimming them out so they are varying levels of chewy.

Informational Cascades!

in nyt!

Gumbo

Gumbo
Originally uploaded by gay.goy.gourmet

the end of the jerk chicken, m&k andouille, tons of okra. Built on a roux of delicious bacon fat.

foodlist

• gumbo (chicken, andouille, okra)
• black beans and rice
• mushroom risotto
• polenta with goatsbeard blue cheese (!)

yum

Skirt Steak With Rainbow Peppers

snooping

The Compiler Detective - What Compiler and Options Were Used to Build This Application?

a delightful dilemma

• prik khing curry with chicken and long beans
• chicken and vegetables in peanut sauce
• quiche with bacon and mustard greens
• linguine alla carbonara
• roasted fennel and apple
• something with eggplant. probably thai red curry, but maybe something chinese.

And the dilemma I wish I had every day of the year: what to do with about 4 pounds of tomatoes, a meaty red heirloom variety, green zebras, and sungolds.

back in st louis foodlist

• shrimp tacos? or arroz/paella. or both.
• red curry with chicken, salad (cucumber, tomato, avocado, onion, fishsauce)
• stewed tuscan style lima beans and tomatoes, semolina bread
• cantaloupe basil sorbet
• tortilla española
• ma po tofu, jasmine rice
• corn, tomato, and goat cheese crêpes soufflées

vnc from mac to ubuntu of ssh

Combo of this on the server and this on the client

Week 14

• cucumbers
• fresh lima beans
• eggplants, purple and white
• two more canary melons
• apples
• beets
• tomatoes
• purple and green peppers
• peaches
• garlic*
• better tomatoes*

Last week

• Purple carrots
• potatoes
• anaheim chiles
• green pepper
• tomatoes
• corn
• canary melon
• cantaloupe
• eggplant
• mustard greens
• red cabbage
• peaches

yay for type

nyt. typophile.

naan!

naan!
Originally uploaded by gay.goy.gourmet

Week 12!

The wonderful Vicki, the woman who runs our CSA farm, said proudly this week, “the harvest is starting to come in!”

• Watermelon
• red leaf lettuce
• cantaloupe
• bag o’ baby lettuce
• red pimiento peppers
• green zebra tomato*
• garlic*
• eggplants
• purple cauliflower
• carrots
• onions
• cucumbers
• red potatoes
• peaches!

CSA Week 11

• mesclun
• cherry zebra tomatoes!
• blueberries (best of the year)
• green bell peppers
• [farmgirl organics] tomatillos
• cucumber
• zucchino
• cabbage
• onions
• [green acres] basil
• green beans
• beets&greens
• carrots
• cantaloupe (not pictured)

pasta

pasta
Originally uploaded by gay.goy.gourmet

menu (picture later)

• pesto
• cuban black beans and rice
• a couple of cole slaws (maybe 3)
• zucchini tacos
• more cantaloupe-basil sorbet

ugh i actually thought this WAS a local news story

Without his prestigious turn in the NEJM, Oscar might have ended up on the local television news.

Week 10

• red tropea onion
• green and purple bell peppers
• lemon basil!
• kohlrabi
• mesclun
• green beans
• beets!
• honeydew
• apples
• zucchini
• cucumber
• garlic and tomatoes*

Well, that’s one way to put it

But that’s just a little crude, don’t you think?

To make the [abstinence-only] point, Mr. Love grabbed a tape dispenser and snapped off two fresh pieces. He slapped them to his filing cabinet and the floor; they trapped dirt, lint, a small metal bolt. “Now when it comes time for them to get married, the marriage pulls apart so easily,” he said, trying to unite the grimy strips. “Why? Because they gave the stickiness away.”

Summer Vegetable Crêpes

Summer Vegetable Crêpes
Originally uploaded by gay.goy.gourmet

menu

• crêpes with corn and golden beets, goat cheese and ricotta; served with steamed green beans and carrots, and beurre blanc; cantaloupe-basil sorbet
• thai eggplant curry, sticky rice
• zucchini tacos
• spaghetti with overgrown arugula, broccoli, and walnuts
• chicken paprikás with cucumber-onion salad

CSA Week 9

Half the summer still remains!

• tomatoes*
• cantaloupe
• big soup-making arugula
• mesclun
• green beans
• kohlrabi
• large and two small cucumbers
• zucchini
• cherries
• green acres thai eggplants*
• green acres carrots*
• lots of broccoli
• farmgirl organics golden beets*
• corn

Cool tool of the month: regexhibit

Regexhibit matches regex using perl, and provides all kinds of details about the match / capture groups. Previously I would test regexes (regexen?) in SubEthaEdit, but this does it on the fly. Very handy indeed!

“exquisitely ugly”

In just a few years, the exquisitely ugly shoes known as "Crocs" have spread around the world like a Paris Hilton sex tape, giving rise to an epidemic of croc babies and their more egregious counterparts, croc parents. (Slate article)

Vegetable day #8

• crimini and oyster mushrooms*
• parsley*
• green onions
• the best cabbage I have ever had, picked this morning (see below, all four slaws)
• collard greens
• basil*
• corn
• zucchini
• non-chioggia Italian heirloom beets
• cucumbers large and small
• garlic*
• broccoli
• tomatoes*
• peaches!

* I bought / not in the box.

Menu

This week the CSA box was big, but we also had plans for someone or other to come over on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. So I had to supplement with a few extra exciting things.

• 4 cole slaws: szechuan [with broccoli, cabbageturnip, chili oil, sesame oil, and a bit of soy sauce], thai [with basil, mint, peanuts, tomato, chile, and lots of fish sauce], american [with creamy mustardy dressing, peas, and raisins], hungarian [with onion]
• the lamb kibbe I've been meaning to make for a month. The ground lamb is now defrosted.
• sautéed zucchini with lemon and garlic
• tabbouleh
• caldo verde or caldo gallego (some soup with chorizo/chouriço and kale)
• corn fritter of some kind (probably a couple kinds, with onion or zucchini)
• tofu marsala with lots of mushroomy goodness
• omelet with bacon and mushrooms (and a touch of chile paste)

• cabbageturnips
• green onions
• zucchini
• cucumber
• nappa
• red leaf lettuce
• broccoli
• kale
• corn!

haha tshirt

CSA week 6!

• cabbageturnip!
• 3 zucchini
• carrots
• green onions
• spinach
• broccoli
• red leaf lettuce
• more nappa
• [Paul Friday] strawberries & “flamin’ fury” peaches
• [growingpower] tomato

menu

• stir fried beef with nappa and scallions
• bekana and bok choy with tofu, oyster sauce
• fior di latte gelato with strawberries
• pizze – asparagus and margherita; salad
• chili basil chicken
• pan fried tofu with sautéed mixed greens

recipes not to lose

I was figuring out what I would do with my basket of white currants from Nichols farm, and settled upon an Austrian dessert that first I found a picture of, but then struggled to find an appropriate recipe. I wanted to make sure to have an appropriately moist cake, a layer of berries (not baked so they burst), and meringue. A baked together meringue cake looks good for another time when I want to make pastry cream. Not related: I also ran across a turkish dish with eggplant that looks tasty.

CSA Week 5

• 1lb broccoli
• big white radish+greens
• small bunch red radishes
• carrots
• bok choy
• turnip greens
• [mick klug] cherries
• mesclun
• [nichols] white currants
• scallions
• lettuce
• giant head of nappa
• basil!

yesterday's day of mexican cooking

a trio of salsas
Originally uploaded by gay.goy.gourmet

here, a trio of salsas. We made tortillas, three fillings, sauces, and drinks.

summer salad with carrots and strawberries

summer salad with carrots and strawberries
Originally uploaded by gay.goy.gourmet

A nicely set table; two food pics

Peonies are pretty

Salad with tomatoes and peas, creamy herb dressing

My flash isn’t digital-ttl capable, so I have to shoot all my flash shots manually (a useful exercise anyway, I suppose). Here by accident I had it on “high”, ISO 500, 1/125 f/5 (40mm). I especially like how the wood spatula handle floats against all the white.

Perhaps less interesting than the picture: this is two chinese preparations of choy. On the left, japanese bekana or tokyo choy is cooked with water chestnuts and cubed frozen (spongy) tofu, in oyster sauce (or, as Scott prefers, “brown” sauce) with scallion, ginger, and garlic. On the right is bok choy with carrots in a gingery miso sauce with honey. Both were delicious last night and for lunch today.

a varied dinner party menu

• fresh tortillas
• Masa for whatever other antojitos we want to make (sopes anyone?)
• Pork-raisin-almond-chile filling (see below)
• Shredded chicken filling
• Beans with pork
• Fresh and cooked tomatillo salsas
• Tomato salsa
• Guacamole
• Zucchini and avocado carpaccio with herbs (inspired by last week’s Bittman column – oh, to be Patricia Wells…)
• Someone: bring crab, please

and for another time:

• jeweled rice
• lamb kibbe (see below; I was going to make it before this lovely article in the Times. I suppose I’ll cook some of it, though I do prefer my Prairie Grass Farm lamb raw.)
• mouhamara (which I learned today is the top web search the lands people on my blog)

A very happy surprise!

A friend is rushing out of town and called to offer us two tickets he had to tonight’s performance of Verdi’s Requiem by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra!

I really like the stuff

vitaminwater is the subject of the latest Slate “Ad Report Card” column. I have liked the stuff since I first saw it on 10/$10 sale. My favorite flavors are the red ones, the new XXX and Power-C. A friend alleges that all vitaminwater causes digestive … unpleasantness. Fortunately, I haven't had his problem. Also, the euro talk show ad is great – far better than any attempt I’ve seen for example on SNL since Sprockets.

For the curious

How I get it all home: in my 1999 Chrome Metropolis messenger bag, of course!

Multicolored carrots

I have mentioned to people carrots of colors other than orange, and they tend to register complete astonishment. It turns out we can blame the Dutch in the 16th century for favoring patriotic Orange carrots.

Here are two, which I'd call red and purple. The red has just a thin layer of bright pigment (so you'd never want to peel these!) and the purple one goes about halfway into the root.

Yes, Shelled Peas

These peas from Mick Klug farm are only here for 2–3 weeks a year. I cannot eat enough of them to last the rest of the year.

CSA Week 4

Last week we got our box on Saturday instead of Wednesday because I was out of town for a couple days, so 4 days later it’s quite a similar assortment, plus two items I bought from others.

• Carrots
• Bok choy
• Bekana
• Green leaf lettuce
• Sugar snap peas (hiding basket in the back)
• Mesclun
• White radishes
• Kale
• [Iron Creek Farm] Purple Cherokee tomato
• [Mick Klug] shelled peas!

Dinner last night, lunch today

Quiche with mustard greens and bacon.

I-64 story on Marketplace

You could call it Missouri’s “Big Dig” — just without the tunnels and the multibillion-dollar cost over-runs that Boston had.

dinner

ceasar salad with buffalo strip steak

parker house rolls

marble cupcakes with semisweet chocolate glaze

menu

• thai chili garlic fried noodle with carrot, broccoli rabe, and lemon basil
• stir fried bekara, miso-honey sauce & bok choy with oyster sauce
• bacon and mustard greens quiche
• lamb kofta or something meatballish with yogurt, and some type of naan or roti
• kale and butternut squash risotto
• salad with strip steak, hard-cooked egg, and sugar snap peas; roasted purple potatoes

CSA Week 3

• sugar snap peas
• bok choy
• 5 carrots
• bekara (a japanese choy)
• kale
• curly mustard
• green leaf lettuce
• lemon basil
• broccoli rabe/raab/rapini
• mesclun

From Chris Dodd's people, this is just hilarious. Wolf Blitzer is such a tool!

ubuntu myth feisty wlan wireless break

check /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist for wireless card (scott's is rtl8185; 818x are blacklisted) and for that card, add an extra character to end of essid (dumb!)

I am lazy. I found a binary.

iTunesFS.

and a menu

• stir fried kohlrabi, leaves, and yu choy – vegetarian sauce (grrrrr friends)
• radish masala parathas! and beef sukka
• mesclun salad with teriyaki tofu and timbale of coconut rice
• southern-style bacony mustard and radish greens; cornbread
• peanut-crusted trout over sautéed swiss chard from Jacques Pépin

CSA week 2

Clockwise from berries:

• ‘Early glow’ strawberries
• Curly mustard greens
• Baby lettuce (red romaine, oak leaf, green leaf, etc.)
• Baby mesclun (spinach, mizuna, bok choy, arugula, purple mustard, etc.)
• Two more cabbageturnips!
• Cilantro
• Swiss chard
• Tomatoes (bought separately, different farm)
• White radishes
• Orange and purple carrots

tamales de acelgas

This dish tamales de acelgas, wrapped in swiss chard, called out to me from the chapter on tamales in my primary mexican cookbook, Diana Kennedy’s Art of Mexican Cooking. The pork filling combines sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and umami in a marvelous balance that is definitely Mexican, but as she notes, hints of the middle east (raisins! almonds!) but I would say also of southeast asia (one can imagine adding lemongrass, some ginger and lime; switching the pasillas for bird chiles, and passing it off as Malaysian).

I had made the filling before, but we were impatient, and ended up filling masa balls and deep frying them (yum). This time, however, I blanched the swiss chard, spread it with the mixed dough (fresh masa, btw, from a Pilsen tortilla factory), and carefully rolled up the leaves around it and set them in the steamer for a very long time. I am certain that I spread it too thick and made them too large, but I only had 10 large leaves. Nevertheless, the tamales are marvelous – especially for lunch the next day(s) – but the filling is so good on its own, and so easy, in the future I will probably just make a pile of tortillas and serve it as tacos.

aha

Thanks to an astute reader, the mystery vegetable has been identified as a purple kohlrabi. I wasn't off in thinking it was turnip-like – its german name means “cabbageturnip.” I'm gonna call it that. We were not alone in being perplexed.

Now, what to do with it—

• Radish greens soup
• Either pad thai or chinese pork and garlic chives stir fry
• Lamb’s quarter pesto
• Stir-fried yu choy with black bean sauce or oyster sauce
• Arugula and roasted beet salad
• Mustard or beet greens au gratin
• Tamales de acelgas (swiss chard wrapped tamales)
• Mustard greens with spicy ginger - honey - miso sauce

It’s here! First CSA box

Clockwise from the back at about 11 o’clock:

• red romaine
• beets (with their greens)
• a mystery root vegetable cabbageturnip! (purple kohlrabi)
• radishes (with greens)
• a rainbow of chard – orange, white, red, yellow
• yu choy
• arugula
• cilantro
• purple mustard greens
• lamb’s quarter

lol

You cannot resist lolcats.

Our CSA starts Wednesday!

yay! Others have alleged that we won't be able to figure out what to do with an abundance of, say, beets. I'm up to the challenge (I also happen to really love beets).

MacFuse has changed my life

Spotlight, and metadata search in general (cf. WinFS, the iTunes library, iTunes for PDFs, the iPhoto library; even bibdesk) is still supposed to (read: hasn’t yet but just around the corner!) change the way we store, organize, and interact with our data. And certainly there is a place for metadata search. But files still have to be stored on disks, and regardless of how complicated you make your symlink structure, distinct servers remain distinct. File systems are not going away. They remain “familiar” according to MacFuse developer Amit Singh. His port of FUSE (Filesystems in USEr space) takes the familiarity of a folders-and-files to its extreme.

It has a sheerly practical side too though. It's really nice to mount ssh volumes of remote servers as if they are local. And, for people who have to deal with Windows hardware like external drives, it offers what Tiger left out, NTFS-3g read/write support. Here is Singh’s tech demo video, showing some other cool stuff, like a Picasa file system. (There is one for flickr as well.) The "albums and photos" is a direct analog of "folders and files" and there’s no reason we shouldn't be able to access it like any other volume. I have not yet tested the iPod file system – all filesystems are just plugins for the underlying kernel plugin – but it should be the easiest way to copy stuff from an iPod. Right now I'm mainly using it to work on various remote servers. As nice as cyberduck is, sshfs is the way things should be – and now, at last, are.

the only appropriate remembrance

of Falwell is on Slate, where Timothy Noah writes, “He was a bigot, a reactionary, a liar, and a fool. Herewith, a Falwell sampler.” …

On global warming: “I can tell you, our grandchildren will laugh at those who predicted global warming. We’ll be in global cooling by then, if the Lord hasn’t returned. I don't believe a moment of it. The whole thing is created to destroy America’s free enterprise system and our economic stability.”

Classy?

“These phones are aimed at classy users we haven’t been addressing,” said Motorola’s chief executive, Edward J. Zander, who has been guiding the company through a turbulent yearlong downturn….

The phones were introduced at a dance studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and recorded video demonstrations included the singer Fergie, the soccer star David Beckham and the race car driver Danica Patrick.

São Paulo sans ads

IMG_6091 Originally uploaded by Tony de Marco.

I read about this a while ago, and finally found some cool pictures of it… the entire city has banned advertising in public space. From onthecommons:

As Brazilian journalist Robert Pompeu de Toledo wrote, the ad ban is “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash. For once in life, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost.”

The article also refers to a project called Delete! in Vienna, which covered ads and signage all in the same color wrapping.

foodlist

• baked blue potatoes with gruyère, (frozen) butternut squash soup
• pechuga de pollo al ajillo, mashed blue potato
• thai curry (soup) of some variety, with eggplant, carrots, basil, sticky rice, bean sprouts
• pasta with zucchini, red lentil, tomato sauce
• tacos of guacamole, chicken “andouille”, mushrooms, and new favorite salsa
• swiss chard & red lentil curry soup, with bread

meat for at least a month!

I bought meat at the Tower Grove market (Norris pork, Seven Thunder Bison, and Prairie Grass lamb) because it's really expensive at Green City here in chicago. So for my own memory, here is what's in the freezer (including what Scott had):

• 2lb ground lamb
• 1lb ground bison
• 4 jalapeño-cheese bison sausages
• 8 lamb-apple bratwurst
• 1lb bacon
• 1¼lb bison london broil
• ½ lb × 2 bison skirt steak
• 1lb beef stew meat
• ½ lb ground beef
• 3 chicken breasts
• 1 chicken “andouille”

next

Frozen Yogurt!

Image from 101cookbooks.

*drool*

The company’s whole way of being was on display. Five workers were slicing spring strawberries for sorbet, made only with San Bernardo mineral water from Piedmont. Mr. Martinetti was surrounded by boxes of high-grade Ecuadorean and Venezuelan chocolate, hazelnut paste from Piedmont and Madagascar vanilla.

Into a huge steel vat, workers had just poured several cases of $30-a-bottle Spanish sherry for one flavor, Málaga, otherwise made of milk, organic eggs and sugar. (Raisins would be added later.) Mr. Martinetti dunked a lowly plastic cup into the vat and poked his nose in as if it were a glass of his family’s Barolo.

New gelateria to open in Manhattan. (And why I make my own gelato… ain't none of that shit in St Louis, though of course a couple blocks away from us in Chicago is Canady le Chocolatier, who is an artisan in every way.)

It's been two days! WUSTL is still great!

That's the tone of nearly every article in the official mouthpiece of Washington University, the Record, which they dump in our email boxes twice a week. It's over-the-top self-congratulation. And whenever there is a new ranking of any kind published, I am surprised they don't have a special issue.

if/when i visit mariana

Most important, they run two of the best and most distinctive restaurants in Mexico City. Which is another way of saying they run two of the best and most distinctive Mexican restaurants in the world.

some british guy for slate on france and turkey

“Sarkozy is the first leading politician in any large European country to say loudly and clearly that Turkey will not join the European Union.” But I don't think Sarko is nearly the showman that de Gaulle was. (full transcript tr/en and orig fr in very cool site – check out cartoons!)

Email: “Silent corporate cancer”

”It eats away at people's time, a minute at a time. I call it bleeding to death from a thousand pinpricks.“ Not unlike, say, blog reading or writing ;)

technomagic!

I just set up Proximity on my Powerbook using this handy guide, and I love it. It's one of those nerdy things that ought to “just work” and sure enough it does! Unsure of the drain on battery for keeping bluetooth on (phone or computer). I just walk away, and within my polling interval, the screen saver activates and requires a password. And here I thought bluetooth was just for lesbian fashion accessories! (They really seem to love the handsfree devices – no other group have I seen wear them out to bars, clubs etc.)