Adventures in Madison

I was at the Institute for Research on Poverty Summer Research Workshop (which I co-organize) in Madison last week, which was the reason for the light blogging. As always, it was a lively and interesting time, with many old friends and some new ones as well.

Some notable bits from the conference:

I made my annual pilgrimage to Smokey's Club for a scandalously good (and likely scandalously unhealthy) meal of old-style relish (i.e. radishes and carrot sticks), cheese curds, salad, soup, 18 (!) ounce steak and hash browns. The dining experience itself is part of the attraction as Smokey's does not appear to have changed in any meaningful way since, say, 1963. Good fun.

The organizer / old people dinner was at Harvest. You can get steak there too (and I did, and it was really good, as was the chilled asparagus soup) but it is a very different dining experience. Harvest presents itself as upscale health food, with lots of organic bits, nods to localism, meat from cows that have been serenaded and massaged and all the rest of the things one associates with this genre of restaurant. I recommend it too.

At the other end of the gustatory scale, I learned about something called the "Super Donut" from a paper on school lunches (not yet on his web page) by Dave Ribar of UNC-Greensboro. The super donut occasioned much inquiry and mirth among the assembled academics. Further research upon my return led to this review and the surprising information that the Super Donut has ties to former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris. Small world.

The Orpheum Theater on State Street in Madison, which I walked by each day on my way from the hotel to the conference, does not appear to be showing movies any more, but does have a restaurant in the lobby. My wife and I went to a movie there about six years ago, when I was thinking of taking a job at Madison. The theater is at least as gorgeous inside as the restored Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, but in less good repair and worse financial shape. The Orpheum's wikipedia page has some additional history.

Finally, I learned from a paper by (very clever) sociologist Dalton Conley of NYU that a non-trivial fraction of monozygodic ("identical") twins go through life believing themselves to be dizigodic ("fraternal") twins. The paper is not yet on his web page (though there is a related working paper) but I was struck simply by this interesting sort of measurement error, which has, presumably, strong consequences in some cases for how children are treated growing up.

Another alternative holiday interpretation

Maggie McNeill meditates on the meaning of May Day.

Today

Happy New Year 2011 to all the readers of ECONJEFF!

I'm amazed that I've kept up with the blog this long ...

On cleaning the house

The Guardian (!) publishes some old-school cleaning advice that seems like it should have ended up in the Daily Telegraph.

My favorite bit:

There's no such thing as a cleaning cheat You can hide mess and disguise stains, but something is either clean or it isn't. If you have people coming and the place isn't clean, just tidy up the clutter and focus on the ambience – candles, flowers and low lighting all work wonders. Make time to get yourself ready, too.

The bit I did not know:

Towels go hard because washing powder and fabric softeners leave mineral deposits in the fibres, which are then baked in as the towels dry. To ensure you have soft towels at all times, wash in laundry liquid rather than powder, and take out of the dryer or off the line before they're bone dry. Soaking hard towels in a solution of water and white vinegar (145ml vinegar: 4.5 litres of water) will bring them back to life.

For readers not familiar with the solar system of British newspapers, a piece on housecleaning that really belonged in the Guardian would recommend cleaning not as exercise, as in this piece, but as a nice way to overcome class biases and bond with the workers (before going out for Thai food and the theater).

Facebook oh dear

Seen on FB a few days ago:

[Person] likes Buffalo Wild Wings and 6 other pages:

System of a down [a band it turns out, their new single is "left of center"]
Games
Xbox
Inception
Jesus Christ
DeGrassi: The Next Generation

Hmmmm .... one of these is not like the others.

Competitive punning

An opportunity for my colleague Jim Hines, who is truly the master of puns (as well as master of the tax code) to show off his skills.

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Hanlon's Law

Well, I am on a roll, but it is a roll of mistakes it seems.

An astute reader points out in the comments that what I (with tongue firmly in cheek) denoted as Smith's law in a recent post:

"Never assume malevolence when incompetence will do."

in fact is already well established in the world as Hanlon's law, which states (somewhat less elegantly) that one should

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

There are also links to Robert Heinlein and Napolean!

So, thanks to the poster.

It is important to get the attribution right.

Don't mess with mother nature

Cool pictures of the Icelandic volcano.

Hat tip: Jackie Smith