Err?

Sometimes, you have to wonder whether people really have no imagination, or whether there's something more nefarious at work.  Look, for example, at these two articles - one from the Post, and one from the New York Times.  

They have the same premise - America's blue chip stocks are crumbling.  Reasonable enough that two major newspapers would have a story on that issue given the calamitous state of the stock market, you think.  But the similarities stretch far beyond general theme. They both start by comparing the price of a share of Citigroup to something else - an ATM fee for the Post, and an item at the dollar store for the Times.  Both describe Citigroup's falling below $1.00 as having "broke the buck".  Both refer back to Citigroup's price of $55 two years ago. Both mention that a share of GM isn't enough to buy a gallon of gasoline.  Both compare the price of a share of GE to something else.  Remarkably enough, to precisely the same something else, "compact fluorescent lightbulbs".    Thankfully, they disagree on just how many lightbulbs one gets to buy with that share.

I'm sure, if I had the time or inclination to compare them further, I'd discover even more to list here.  In any case, though, it seems likely that both authors cribbed substantial portions of their articles from some common source. Is there a journalistic practice I'm unaware of that legitimizes this kind of half-plagiarism? 

UPDATE: I was mistaken.  The Post refers to compact fluorescent flood lightbulbs.  There's some good reporting for ya.  Also, in case anyone thinks that "breaking the buck" is a common way to refer to a stock going below a dollar, it's not.  Finance people typically talk about "breaking a buck" when the NAV of a money market fund falls below a dollar - which incidentally is a shocking, world-changing catastrophe that has happened recently. Not when a stock falls below a dollar.

Death & Company

We sampled a number of drinks I haven't had before at our favorite bar in New York last night - Death & Company.  Particularly amazing was the Fancy Free  (mostly bourbon and maraschino liqueur) and the Martinez (potentially a precursor to the Martini - gin, sweet vermouth, more maraschino liqueur, and angostura bitters).  We also liked their Hyde Park Swizzle.  

Organic means safer?

I'm completely, completely baffled by this New York Times article, exposing the amazing secret that the USDA organic classification has nothing to do with food safety. Why would rodents and pests be any less inclined to raid organic grains and other produce than conventional food? And in any case, "food safety" in the traditional sense is often the most gruesome enemy of the organic and localist and taste interest groups. For the food safety advocate, after all, the ideal world is where everything is irradiated to a sterile crisp.

I especially liked the nurse practioner's lament at the beginning of the article, which reminds me of a different misunderstanding:

“Why is organic peanut butter better than Jif?” said Ms. Devlin-Sample, a nurse practitioner from Pelham, N.Y. “I have no idea. If we’re getting salmonella from peanut butter, all bets are off

Catering Follies

The caterer in question in this post today proposed a literally absurd menu. I excerpt my response below - to be clear, I am being as kind as possible in my note:

"However, to be quite blunt, I have not reviewed the food and wine selections you have proposed, nor anything else for that matter, because the price estimate you have provided is utterly unacceptable. Honestly, I am bewildered that you would have taken my clearly expressed preference that we proceed on a budget (I was quite explicit on this point during our meeting, even mentioning the range of other proposals, which I was not inclined to do) and produced a proposal well in excess of $300 per person (even excluding a gratuity, as I read it) without any prior warning. Of course, you are entirely at liberty to set your own prices, and I am sure others are happy to pay for your services at these rates. But on the basis of your proposal, I am disappointed to tell you that we have nothing further to discuss."

* I have not asked the person in question for permission, because I am just republishing my own message. If they don't like it, they can complain to me.

Will touches on "food and sex"

Even if the premise of the op-ed is true (that people invest more care in what they eat than in who they have sexual relations with - I would dispute that most people today care at all about what they eat, outside an elite cadre), I am puzzled to find that George Will is puzzled by that result. People necessarily care about their physical aspect, and part of the taboo against sexual relations outside of marriage was precisely that. Fear of disease, and above all, pregnancy for women and unplanned fatherhood for men.

Technology has rendered moot most of that concern - the careful, prudent elite that Will (and Eberstadt's underlying article) describes can prevent pregnancy (or, more troublingly, terminate it), and disease can be both prevented and cured.

There is yet no answer to the twin physical dangers presented by food, which I will broadly term fat and cancer. There is no "pill" that governs weight the way the birth control pill governs fertility. Every day, it becomes more evident that bad food (though which bad food precisely, we don't know) causes or exacerbates the dread diseases that end so many of our lives. It is entirely rational when presented with this situation that the elite neurotic will expend his or her energy on food safety rather than sexual safety. Sex outside marriage was the corn finished beef of times past.

Instead, we get this prudish morality play from Will and Eberstadt. Odd.

EDIT: Eberstadt's article is more nuanced than Will's, I now think, and acknowledges some of the above.

Corruption

I'm becoming more convinced that Obama's real job, putting aside our fiscal mess, is to root out corruption, both public and private. Of course, some ambient level of corruption is normal - it is the grist of the political mill and of the world outside. But the fetid stink of now is overwhelming. The latest manifestation is Roland Burris, but the moral corruption in the upper echelons of society is deep (when I say moral, I am implying nothing about religion, by the way, in case anyone thinks my problem is that people have left their churches). Of course, my own exposure to the upper echelons has bruised me psychologically for reasons I'm not going to explain here, so I might well be overreacting to personal experiences that have no broader meaning, but I think I am not.

Also, I am in the middle of reading Obama's Dreams from my Father. Obviously, this will become a part of the modern canon - the actual fairly pure thoughts of a future president when he was 33? It's an incredible historical document that will only become more important as journalism passes into history, like reading Teddy Roosevelt's early works, but better. But what strikes me most is the almost preternatural unity of Obama's vision. His writing then sounds so much like his speeches now that I'm almost convinced he re-edited the book in the 2004 release to insert the current rhetoric. More likely, he is so clever that he understands the compelling power of a consistent, lifelong vision, and so he hews intentionally to what he said earlier. I laugh at the Obama groupies who convince themselves that even his mistakes are part of some sort of deeply subtle underplan, certainly, but those exaggerations shouldn't hide the fact that for those of us on the broad right, he is a subtle and powerful opponent.

Fleeting thought of the day

Why do I become extremely ravenous at random intervals during the day? When I say ravenous, I mean as if I could eat a turkey if it was here. I wish I could ignore it.

Two meals becometh one

"Oh God", said the voice to my left suddenly. "I must have eaten, like, 200 calories of these things". The owner of the voice was a deathly thin man, hair all akimbo, a pastel silk scarf wrapped delicately around his neck, attempting to stop his fingers from going towards the lavender sugar encrusted Marcona Almonds at the iconoclastic Ubuntu restaurant and yoga studio in the city of Napa. Turning back to my own little tray of the nuts, it occurred to me how compelling delicious food is, no matter how thin we are, or controlled, or used to masochistic diets negotiated under the constant frown of calorie counts and fat percentages. Like a mother who sneaks some spinach into her child's morning smoothie, Ubuntu draws in its northern california crowd with the promise of ascetic, macrobiotic, veggie bliss, but what it delivers is something far more primal - big, uncompromising, flavor.


It wasn't just the almonds. Joining them as a convenient pre-meal snack are chickpea fries, no longer the stodgy cubes of custom, but thin, long, McDonald's like strands of chickpea, crispy with a pleasing interior. But it is in the tapas style main courses that Ubuntu hits its stride. Even in the midst of winter, the artichoke salad with leaves, miso (that is, as opposed to the traditional anchovy) "bagna cauda" and olive marmalade was astonishing, the slight shavings of parmesan a deft salty accent to the sweet sauces and the perfect vegetables. But I save my loudest accolades for the next two dishes we tried - the first, a composition of radishes, grapefruit, the best beet "tartare" I've ever had and "fork-crushed" avocado, (the last especially a subtle surprise rather than just its usual jolt of healthy, natural fat) and then a deeply satisfying bowl of carrot gnochetti, with what the menu called "carrot pulp crumble" adding a little more of what I take to be Ubuntu's sweet signature. Not to mention that I'm usually disappointed by dessert, so much so that I normally don't order it, but Ubuntu's vanilla bean "cheesecake in a jar" with sour cherries (which are nostalgic for my fiancee, as the flavors of her mother's childhood Tehran) was terrific. To the extent I had a complaint, it was about our second dessert, which turned out to be so forgettable that I have forgotten it entirely.

That meal I contrast with our less impressive visit to Zuni Cafe, about which I was more excited. I don't mean to say that Zuni was bad, in any way. My rabbit salad was marvelous, if small. And the famed roasted chicken for two, which takes an hour from ordering to arrive, was extremely good. Really very good, a great chicken only enhanced by its treatment in the wood fire, sitting atop pungent mustard greens and peasant bread half-croutons soaked in oil and lemon, both crunchy and chewy and then tart. But did it change my thoughts about chicken? Should it be thought to be the kind of chicken that makes a career? Not really.

I've grouped together these two meals in these notes because they inspired our first meal back in New York. As I sat at Zuni, it occurred to me that my own much plainer roast chicken, even when I use a mere $9 "all natural" Murray's rather than some ultra-premium breeds, is nearly as good as Zuni Cafe's landmark dish. And it occurred to me that what would go perfectly with it was Ubuntu's artichoke salad, albeit without the still quivering with freshness greens, and jarred artichokes holding the place of those just out of the ground. So I roasted my chicken in the usual way, with a lemon and herbs inside, legs tied together, and plenty of fleur de sel, and made a simple vinaigrette to dress the baby spinach and artichoke. The results are pictured below, and we ate with happy memories of our trip out west.

Cav Wine Bar and "tastes"

We arrived at Zuni Cafe too early for dinner, so we went looking for somewhere to have a drink until the appointed time. We ended up at Cav Wine Bar, just down Market Street, where owner Pamela S. Busch was patrolling the front room with reassuring confidence. One innovation that I saw universally in California, and see more and more here, is the "taste" of wine - a half glass, 2.5 oz. pour for half price. It lets you drink variety without breaking the budget, and at Cav, it let me do most of a Pinot Noir tasting "flight" for under $20. We both loved the Dubakella Pinot Noir, and were astounded by a French Pinot that tasted so much of barnyard that it was almost unpleasant. The atmosphere was welcoming and friendly, and we had a great time.

What the heck happened?

I was sitting in a beautiful backyard in Los Angeles with (soon to be) family when they asked me, as a lawyer in the far-away province of New York, what the heck has happened to our economy. Of course I said I don't know, and if I did, I would be working for Treasury. But I've got a guess, and it has nothing to do with regulation, or credit default swaps, or whatever else, at least directly. Here is the story I told.

Imagine you were invited to a casino to play poker. And let's say that you're pretty good at poker - you can grind out some nice cash by beating up on the casual players, the weekend warriors. But when you get there, instead of being allowed to go to your usual table, the pit boss takes you to a special room. In the room, he explains the deal he's been offering to a few special people. "All you have to do is roll this die, which has 100 sides, every five minutes or so. If you get through an hour without rolling a '1', you win $20 million". That's a lot of money, you think. You never need to work again if you win. "But what happens if you roll a '1'"? "Oh!", says the pit boss. "Then you lose $1 billion. We have to get paid somehow. But here's the good part. Someone else loses that money - not you".

A lot of people in finance took that deal. They knew the risk of rolling a "1". Of course they did. Or at least their bosses did. But they took the deal because almost anyone would take the deal, when put to the test. The upside (and I can't emphasize this enough) was generational, lasting, wealth - complete freedom to do almost anything forever. The downside was inchoate. Some really bad stuff would happen, possibly, but not to you.

Would you have played the game?

We're back from San Francisco and Los Angeles.  We had a great time in both places, and I'll lead off with a few observations. 

1.  LA is not my kind of city.  Too many cars combined with too many malls.  It's like the suburban Virginia of my youth, but much bigger and more vacuous, somehow. 

2. I made a couple of mistakes in this post.  The obvious one, as was explained to my back then, is that San Francisco is not tied with Chicago for second best food city in the country, but is a clear #2 under the rubric I was thinking about then.  The second thing is that the whole rubric is wrong.  Yes, New York is the best restaurant city in the country.   But best food city?  The californian supermarkets, in February, are still packed with extraordinary local produce, even if it is somewhat limited.  Here, we have tubers.  If anything, I suspect the gap in the summer is even bigger, as our farms start working, but theirs explode.  I'm not sure what to make of this.

3. Food (still) tastes better outside.

4. Visiting a city occupied by Armenians is pretty disturbing, especially because you can't use Armenian as your super secret language anymore.  On the other hand, it is somewhat amusing to be somewhere where every second person looks like either your uncle or great uncle.

5. Why does anyone live in New York, again, when things routinely look like the below over there?  I need to work on my rationalizations for this seemingly unwise decision again.

Valentine's Financiers

We're about to leave for the airport, but for Valentine's Day, in between finishing some late night work and packing, I made a few financiers from Aran's recipe (but sans kumquats).  I prefer mine chewier than they came out (I think I made them too thick) but the beurre noisette makes 100% difference in terms of depth of flavor.  Wow. 

California

I should say that I'm flying to California (first Los Angeles, then San Francisco) tomorrow for a week of vacation. In LA, we intend to see family and eat Mexican food. The lineup for San Francisco includes the well reviewed vegetarian yoga-studio/restaurant Ubuntu (Bruni's review here) and Zuni Cafe (the roasted chicken is supposed to be revelatory). We'll also try to get to ad hoc (though I think we'll fail) and possibly Chez Panisse or more likely its informal cafe.

Zibetto

After months of frustration about bad coffee in midtown, I've recently discovered Zibetto Espresso Bar on 56th and 6th. No sofas and couches here. No, this is the way they do fast coffee (and breakfast especially) in Europe - belly up to the bar and slap your folded newspaper next to a warmed cornetto and strong espresso. Of course, part of this is pure nostalgia for me - I've had countless breakfasts like this flipping through a Le Monde when I worked with my uncles at their carpet store in Paris. But nostalgia aside, the coffee is very very good.

Jacques Torres

So, what kind of person goes blocks out of his way to pick up a free $2 Jacques Torres bonbon because he heard about it on some blog?



Yeah, me. How'd you guess?

EDIT: I especially liked my effort to sidle up to people handing out the chocolates as if I was surprised to find them there.

A note

Just a random public service announcement - caterers have not understood that the (economic) world has ended between the last time they were busy and today. Maybe none of us has. But really, people, you are not in the driver's seat anymore. Sorry.

EDIT: Also, I realize that you way you used to shame people into loosening the purse-strings was to pronounce the phrase "I realize you are on a budget" with a slight sneer encircling the last word. Soo, that never would have worked on me anyway, as I am not on a quest to produce the puurfect day and I think budgets are very good things indeed, but it really is out of place now. Just so you know.

An agreement?

From an article in yesterday's New York Times about fertility clinics that produce too many children:

"One woman, a nurse who could afford only one try at in vitro, pressured Dr. Chiu to transfer eight embryos. 'I said under one condition,' Dr. Chiu remembered. 'I made her sign an agreement that she would do selective reduction.' That agreement, to remove some of the embryos if they lived, was very likely unenforceable."

You think? A personal service contract requiring abortion?

Having said that, I am generally interested in the idea of restraints that are not necessarily enforceable, though my thoughts range to bylaws passed by the shareholders restricting the the board of a Delaware corporation rather than to fertility policy. Still, what was the doctor thinking? Even if one were okay with the idea of such a contract, can you imagine trying to enforce it?

EDIT: I wonder if such a contract has ever made it to court.

Profligacy

Just flagging that the President discussed the question about whether it makes sense to encourage consumers to spend when they should be saving (maybe) in his press conference:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. In your opening remarks, you talked about that if your plan works the way you want it to work, it's going to increase consumer spending. But isn't consumer spending, or over-spending, how we got into this mess? And if people get money back into their pockets, do you not want them saving it or paying down debt first, before they start spending money into the economy?

MR. OBAMA: Well, first of all, I don't think it's accurate to say that consumer spending got us into this mess. What got us into this mess initially were banks taking exorbitant, wild risks with other people's monies, based on shaky assets. And because of the enormous leverage, where they had $1 worth of assets and they were betting $30 on that $1, what we had was a crisis in the financial system.

That led to a contraction of credit, which in turn meant businesses couldn't make payroll or make inventories, which meant that everybody became uncertain about the future of the economy.
So people started making decisions accordingly, reducing investments, initiating layoffs, which in turn made things worse.

Now, you are making a legitimate point, Chuck, about the fact that our savings rate has declined. And this economy has been driven by consumer spending for a very long time. And that's not going to be sustainable. You know, if all we're doing is spending and we're not making things, then over time, other countries are going to get tired of lending us money. And eventually the party's going to be over.

Well, in fact, the party now is over. And so the sequence of how we're approaching this is as follows. Our immediate job is to stop the downward spiral. And that means putting money into consumers' pockets. It means loosening up credit.

It means putting forward investments that not only employ people immediately but also lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth. And that by the way is important, even if you're a fiscal conservative, because the biggest problem we're going to have, with our federal budget, is if we continue a situation in which there are no tax revenues, because economic growth is plummeting at the same time as we've got more demands for unemployment insurance; we've got more demands for people who've lost their health care, more demand for food stamps. That will put enormous strains on the federal budget as well as the state budget.

So the most important thing we can do for our budget crisis right now is to make sure that the economy doesn't continue to tank. And that's why passing the Economic Recovery Plan is the right thing to do, even though I recognize that it's expensive.

Look, I would love not to have to spend money right now. I'd -- you know, this notion that somehow I came in here just ginned up to spend $800 billion, you know, that -- that wasn't -- that wasn't how I envisioned my presidency beginning. But we have to adapt to existing circumstances.

Now, what we are going to also have to do is to make sure that as soon as the economy stabilizes, investment begins again; we're no longer contracting, but we're growing; that our midterm and long-term budget is dealt with. And I think the same is true for individual consumers. Right now, they're just -- they're just trying to figure out how do I make sure that if I lose my job, you know, I'm still going to be able to make my mortgage payments.

Or they're worried about, how am I going to pay next month's bills? So they're not engaging in a lot of long-term financial planning.

Once the economy stabilizes and people are less fearful, then I do think that we're going to have to start thinking about how do we operate more prudently, because there's no such thing as a free lunch. So if -- if you want to get -- if you want to buy a house, then putting zero down and buying a house that is probably not affordable for you in case something goes wrong, that's something that has to be reconsidered.

So we're going to have to change our -- our bad habits. But right now, the key is making sure that we pull ourselves out of the economic slump that we're in.

A bit of consumerism

What with all the talk of profligacy below, let me offer a shopping tip. Yes, the most beautiful men's watch in the world is the IWC portugueser (so I say). I will not, however, spend even the $4000 one needs to spend on Timezone to get one (much less the $6,800 new, or $10,000 + for the rose gold Automatic).

Lots of research for things that look like the IWC (I wanted something in the 38mm plus range in terms of diamater, and a main face and two smaller faces, whatever they're technically called), and offer some craft and originality lead me to an unexpected place - Poljot, a Soviet era manufacturer which makes wonderful watches with an interesting Russian made movement for less than $500, and specifically Poljot's Strela (mine is much plainer, but the picture I found online on a dealer's site isn't great). On ebay, where I found mine, the price drops much lower than that.

The chief downside at this point is that the Strela is a mechanical watch, meaning it needs to be wound. I have not figured out how much, as yet. Also, you can really only buy it from a German dealer for a fair price, so there is some execution risk to the deal.

Gino's

We were in Howard Beach, Queens, the other day for things unrelated to food, but I had heard of a local pizza joint with a big reputation, so we made our way there for a quick snack. So, quick is likely never the result of visiting Gino's of Howard Beach, since the line appears to be perpetually out the door, but the "grandma" pizza is truly excellent - thin, crisp, dotted with fresh cheese, and thick chunks of garlic throughout.

Also, they serve a $13 seafood salad which would cost $25 in the city. If, for some reason, one is in Howard Beach, I wouldn't miss this place.