A Ku Indeed!

Sullivan quote from Mankiw:

The question for economists now is whether the administration’s assumptions, and the model based on them, were correct. After all, if we could be sure their model was right, we would know what to conclude when their stimulus plan was followed by 10% unemployment: The patient was sicker than they thought, and unemployment would surely have been higher still if not for the stimulus. (Indeed, since Obama’s advisors do believe their model was right, this is the conclusion they have reached.) The trouble is, we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct. To react to a model’s failure to predict events accurately by insisting that the model was nonetheless right — as Obama’s economic advisors have done — is hardly the most obvious course. Careful economists should instead respond with humility. When their predictions fail — as they often do — they should not dig in their heels, but should instead be willing to go back to their starting assumptions and question their validity.

Mankiw seems to be confusing two groups of people and then drawing an illicit conclusion. I mean sure, if it’s true that “we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct” then _economists qua economists_ should be “humble” and wonder if their basic assumptions were right, or if they simply misread the initial conditions of the practical application of their theory. But Mankiw’s not talking about “economists qua economists”. He’s talking about the President’s economic advisers, and they are part of a political team. In a political climate where even the slightest “humility” about basic assumptions would be met with a constant barrage of unrelenting attack segments on programs on FOX news and talk radio, you are left naturally scoffing at Mankiw’s ivory tower advice. Essentially, there’s a further “economic” variable at play here: the cost/benefit analysis of humility in a massively angry, divisive and partisan context. It’s easy to say what that calculation yielded: zero gain, total cost. Would I prefer a political climate where both sides have more economic humility? Sure, but where humility is read as weakness, don’t hold your breath.

Newt Gingrich on what grounds religious freedom in the United States:

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

Is Newt being serious? I’ll admit, I’ve never been much of a fan of his, but I used to think that Newt was a smart guy and had at least some scruples about not putting forward completely crazy ideas meant just for red-meat base consumption. Times are a changin’, I guess.

David Frum has a particularly good column on Andrew Breitbart’s latest immoral behavior with respect to the Shirley Sherrod incident. This case is particularly sickening, I think. Not the original attempt to out her as a racist, as if it were true she would deserve to be taken down. It’s the moral righteousness of those who now know it was not only false, but know the tape was doctored. No apologies, no regrets, no nothing. They stand by it. No problem at all. Are there  people like this on the left? I’m sure there are. Although Frum uses the column to go after the collective conservative outfit, my point here is not political. It is simply that this behavior is despicable and it blows my mind that media outfits continue to invite these lowlifes on to peddle their nonsense, giving them more incentive to do it again, and again, and again.

I should also add that I’m not particularly enamored of the NAACP’s reaction to the story, nor the Department of Agriculture’s reaction (which I’m going to guess came from the top). Cowardly to the core.

White pizza is not that easy to find, even if you are in New York. Only some places make it, and even when they do, it’s not typically out and under the glass for a quick order. On top of that, only a handful of places make it well. Why white pizza never caught on in popularity, I’m not sure. It really is a different experience from red pizza, as it substitutes red sauce for a white cream sauce, and it replaces mozzarella for ricotta. Kids don’t like it much (my 5 year old has deemed white pizza “gross” on sight alone — without ever tasting a bite). I like it, but I can see why it is not for everyone.  It’s not the kind off pizza you make every time or even a majority of the time, but you should once in a while just to break things up. Still, it’s tricky to get it right. White pizza can be dry and plain tasting, so you need to tweak it to get it to taste just right.

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On the subject of the Tea Party’s silence on the Defense of Marriage Act, Chris Bodenner at the Atlantic cites with some approval a claim by some in a state Tea Party organization:

The silence is by design, activists with the loosely affiliated movement said, because it is held together by an exclusive focus on fiscal matters and its avoidance of divisive social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Privately, though, many said they back the decision because it emphasizes the legal philosophy of states’ rights…

Sorry, I’m calling bullshit. If we are to believe this, then I suppose that we should expect that the Tea Party leadership does not have, and will not have in future, any stance on gun rights and the 2nd Amendment, which has nothing to do with the economy. Bullshit. A better explanation: abortion is not a hot issue right now, so there’s no need to talk about it. Gay marriage (and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) is a live issue right now, but if the Tea leadership endorsed states’ rights in the context of a repeal of DOMA, their members would run them out of town on a rail.

Bao Pu and I, in the comments on the thread on Mencius, found ourselves on a side discussion about the value of friendship. Specifically, whether friendships have value solely because they give us pleasure or serve our interests in some profit-oriented way, or whether they can be valuable in ways that have nothing to do with profit.

Coincidentally, Andrew Sullivan has a post on this up today, so I thought I’d quote from the author that Sullivan himself quotes approvingly:

There is much that might be said about friendships. They allow us to see ourselves from the perspective of another. They open up new interests or deepen current ones. They offer us support during difficult periods in our lives. The aspect of friendship that I would like to focus on is its non-economic character. Although we benefit from our close friendships, these friendships are not a matter of calculable gain and loss. While we draw pleasure from them, they are not a matter solely of consuming pleasure. And while the time we spend with our friends and the favors we do for them are often reciprocated in an informal way, we do not spend that time or offer those favors in view of the reciprocation that might ensue. Friendships follow a rhythm that is distinct from that of either consumer or entrepreneurial relationships. This is at once their deepest and most fragile characteristic.

I read this piece (“Tenure, RIP: What the Vanishing Status Means for the Future of Education”) in the Chronicle today. A short but interesting read. I happen to be one of those people who think that the benefits of tenure are just as high (if not higher) to institutions as they are to individuals, but I’ll save that argument for some future post. One thing in this article did stick out to me, though. The author reports:

But others argue that the disappearance of tenure is actually not the worst thing that could happen in academe. The competition to secure a tenure-track job and then earn tenure has become so fierce in some disciplines that academe may actually be turning away highly qualified people who don’t want the hassle. A system without tenure, but one that still gave professors reasonable pay and job security, might draw that talent back.

I’m a bit surprised by this claim. So the person(s) making this argument think that the demands put on instructors for obtaining tenure would simply disappear if tenure itself didn’t exist? Seriously? Says who? Seems to me that those demands would remain — instead of working to meet those demands to get tenure, you’d be working to meet those demands to get the VPAA to sign off on your next yearly contract. In terms of the argument above, that might turn away even more qualified people, wouldn’t it? Maybe I’m missing something.

I don’t know what the history of Sicilian pizza is. Is it a geographical thing? An American thing? I don’t know. I’ve never been to Italy, so I can’t say if they make them there.  I can say that I’ve ever seen one outside of the New York City area (I don’t recall seeing them in Connecticut, and I don’t think I’ve seen them in Boston or Philly, but I could be wrong). Outside of Dominos, which doesn’t really have a “Sicilian” but rather just a square shaped (what they call) pizza, you don’t see them here in the Midwest either. They are hard to miss: if you are in the NYC area, peer behind the counter and in a sea of thin crust Napolitiano round pies, you’ll see a deep dish thick crusted rectangular shaped pizza. That’s the Sicilian. It is also usually made with cheese under the sauce, as opposed to on top of it, and different cheeses are sometimes added to the top in addition.

Though I can’t say much about the roots and origins of this kind of pizza, I can say that it is incredibly difficult to make right. I can count a number of places where I think the Napolitiano pizza is really good, but I can only count two places where I bother to buy a Sicilian — Joe’s Pizza (in Mt. Vernon, NY), and Stromboli’s (on St. Mark’s in the East Village, in NYC).  Both places make them differently, but they’re amazingly good. It’s hard to say why it’s so hard to make a good Sicilian pizza (had my share of nasty ones), but I’m committed to capturing that secret at some point before I depart this Earth.

The recipe for my latest attempt (pic to the side) — which was actually quite good, though not exactly at the “Joe’s/Stromboli” gold-standard level– is below.

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I’m a leftie, it’s true. However, I don’t have any problem with the 2nd amendment (though I don’t quite get the “I need a wall full of AK47s” thing). This political advertisement, though, has got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. The gun stuff is hysterical, though the ad is amusing on a variety of levels. At You Tube, it’s called “driving the left nuts” or something. Speaking personally, it doesn’t drive me nuts. I just can’t stop laughing at it. It’s one of those “Oh, I mistakenly thought this was in the Onion” pieces. See below the fold for the laughs.

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