Frequent reader Mark Shawhan sends along this picture of Girton College, Cambridge. I suppose it's an attempt to make me miss the place.

The NYT's chili recipes do not make me want to cook -- I do not want to mess around with chicken gizards, chicken livers, chicken thighs, and sausage in the same recipe, and Baked Beans is just so. . . Yankee (in that way that is not good; Yankee in the way of fresh boiled lobster is great). The Washington Post does a much better job of attracting my interest and possibly overcoming my apathy with its four chili recipes (one cannot live indefinately on yogurt and cereal alone). There's a sirloin and black bean chili that I might try, also a white chicken chili, a mild pork and beef dish, and a vegetarian version.

But sometimes, in the midst of the cold, I just want comfort food for my Super Bowl -- classic chili, not as full of fashionable flavor combinations but exactly what comes to my mind when I think of chili, and even lower fuss than those easy recipes.

Mom's Classic Chili:

3 lbs ground beef
2 28 oz cans diced tomatoes
1 29 oz can tomato sauce
1 large onion, chopped
6 Tbsp chili powder
1 15 oz can pinto beans
1.5 Tbsp sugar
1.5 Tbsp flour
2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp ground cloves
1.5 tsp oregano
1.5 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp white pepper (or black)

[Note on the spices: These are the minimum amounts for those of mild tastes. I use cayenne to taste (some tsps) and more of several of those. To taste...]

Cook ground beef and onion together in a large skillet. While that is cooking, dump everything else together in a very large pot and start simmering. When the beef is done, drain the grease and blot with paper towels; add to the big pot. Simmer on a very low temperature at least an hour; longer is ok. When serving, top each bowl with grated cheddar cheese. Serve with cornbread.

Martin Lloyd writes:

Libertarians may be fun, but they shouldn't be allowed to run countries. People who don't believe in safety nets also tend to believe that they themselves will never fall. Likewise those who believe they should be allowed to ingest anything they damn well please also tend to believe that they won't be the ones mugging grannies to pay for it.

I wasn't actually planning to watch the Superbowl (who's playing again?) but these recipes have encouraged me to change my mind.

Speaking of recipes, apparently law school has made Unlearned Hand forget the virtues of reading a recipe all the way through before beginning.

Paris's perfectly logical drunk driving crackdown has led some people to the perfectly logical suggestion of taking home their unfinished bottles of wine. Alas, the New York Times thinks this idea isn't catching on.

Sadly, this suggestion has also led to this response:

American safe-driving groups contend that telling people to take their wine home may encourage them to drink it in their cars, which is banned in most states.

New York City is considering raising taxicab rates as it increases the total number of taxicab medallions available. (A sign, incidentally, of relative freedom from free market pressures is when you find yourself encouraged to both raise output and prices at the same time).

This article just served to remind me how terrible the NYC taxicab rules are. You could make some sort of principled defense for having a licensing system for taxis in the first place (a need to make sure taxis are relatively safe, don't rob people, obey basic rules, etc). You can't make some principled defense for restricting the total number of said taxis (unless the principle is "protectionism").

And yet, some things, however wrong, seem like they're here to stay.

Professor Levy and his repliers have some awe-inspiring coffee habits. None mention bringing their own coffee to campus, though. I'm rarely on campus without either my 20oz insulated mug or my 24oz stainless steel thermos. It gets me through the morning. Not only does coffee stay hot in them longer than it does in paper or styofoam cups, but what I brew at home tastes better than what the cafes sell (sadly, no way I'll wake up early enough to do the grind your own beans thing), and I have a more fun flavoring than those too-sweet syrups the cafes offer.

The Economist eulogizes the living Dick Gephardt, "Not on our side—but an honest fighter nonetheless."

His shockingly bad finish was a surprise, but there had been ominous signs. Despite three decades of devotion to organised labour, he was stabbed in the back by the biggest unions, which endorsed Mr Dean. Mr Gephardt still picked up various manufacturing unions, but these—no less than his endorsement by both Barry Manilow and Michael Bolton—only seemed to make his candidacy more dated.

For much of his career, Mr Gephardt was America's foremost protectionist. This position was not formed by some think-tank or focus group. In the blue-collar district he has represented since the 1970s closed factories are not statistics, but part of the landscape. People curse the loss of jobs overseas and blame trade policy for the fact their children's prospects seem to be more limited than their own. Mr Gephardt embodied that strain in American life.

the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of use are prepared to sacrifice much in life order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.

*I don't equate Nazism and protectionism; that the former is the far greater equal is abundantly clear.

Ah, so that explains it --

I'm on the mailing list for Jindal supporters from his gubernatorial campaign. Yesterday the email came

WHAT:
Bobby Jindal will announce his future intentions this Thursday.
WHEN:
Covington - 1:30 p.m. at the Best Western Hotel in Covington (Hwy. 190). 
Metairie - 3:00 p.m. at Grace King School in Metairie (4301 Grace King Place, just off West Esplanade). 

Bobby would like to invite you to join him tomorrow, Thursday, January 29th as he announces his future intentions. He would be very honored if you would be able to attend. . . .

Now, I don't know residency rules for Congressional districts, but Bobby Jindal lives in Baton Rouge, which is the LA 6th. Is this just not a problem?

UPDATE: Another Rice Grad says it's not a problem to live in a different congressional district, unless you have a problem with commuting.

This is really Amanda's department, but it's no surprise that you can't keep Bobby Jindal down. (Link via Southern Appeal)

Matthew Yglesias emails to tell me my post on Kurtz doesn't go far enough:

You were way too easy on Kurtz's Scandinavia article, in my opinion. He doesn't even have a correlation! The decline in marriage rates he's concerned with began well before the legalization of gay marriage. Even worse -- Scandinavian countries don't permit gay marriage, they permit civil unions-esque ersatz marriage. Is there evidence that the trend away from marriage accelerated after the civil unions law came in? Again, no. All he has is that the out-of-wedlock birthrate passed the fifty percent mark sometime after the civil unions were instated. The timing of the fifty percent margin, however, is relevant to nothing at all. The real correlation here -- that marriage began to decline and somewhere in the middle of that process gay rights was expanded -- very strongly supports the hypothesis you suggest, that marital decline and gay rates are two effects of the same cause, namely secularism. The man's pathetic.

Heidi Bond links to this column on LOTR dating wisdom. She also pulls out the best quote:

Some people will go to any lengths to get a ring; others, having had one for awhile, will go to any lengths to chuck it into a volcano.

Alex Tabarrok now takes expected utility theory seriously. Economist that I am, I still don't, at least not completely.

That said, I have been known, on occasion, to write out the expected utility calculations and do the math to decide what to do (whether and when to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, whether to apply for school under a binding early admission policy, whether to end a romantic relationship).

Hmm. I suppose that is a great deal more seriously than most people take it.

The Iraqi government has decided (shockingly!) that it wants to keep Iraq's oil after all. Alex Tabarrok decries this while expounding a principle of "no representation without taxation."

This is somewhat related to the "no representation without taxation" principle that a reader suggested to me here.

Afterthought: What percentage of the time that writers proclaim themselves "shocked" about something do they mean it sarcastically?

(via Southern Appeal:) Stanley Kurtz has a long pair of articles suggesting that the empirical data from Sweden show that gay marriage will cause the collapse of the institution of marriage. I use the word "data" in the loosest possible sense. [Kurtz makes some other, slightly better, arguments about how gay marriage might have helped liberal groups by giving them more national attention. Of course, the FMA would also give national attention to the issue.]

Say it with me now: "Correlation does not imply causation."

(After all, which is more likely?-- that gay marriage causes marital collapse through some strange mechanism, or that liberal governments and societies are likely to enact both gay marriages and place less emphasis on the traditional institution of marriage?)

Expected next from Kurtz: an article showing that high taxes also cause the decline of marriage.

Greg at Begging to Differ thinks Dean is gone. The presumptive conclusion is that John Kerry is in, then, unless Edwards or an act of God rears up to supplant him.

Professor Drezner reprised last Tuesday's poll of our class. This time the question was simply "Will Kerry be the nominee, or will it be anybody else?" I think I was the only person who raised my hand for the latter assertion, which is in itself evidence that I should reconsider it.

Even the Ancient and Honorable Edmund Burke Society split evenly last night on "Resolved: Bring on Kerry," [The debate, though, was somewhat hijacked by an hour's detour into the motion to amend this "Resolved: Bring on Arbogast." (Who, you ask, is Arbogast? Precisely the point raised by one speaker in the negative).]