Subprime Stick Figures

By coincidence, Jen was asking me to explain the whole subprime mess to her yesterday. It was a few minutes of me rambling on the drive from wherever we were to her apartment. Today, Megan McArdle had the same explanation...told in stick figures!



You can click on that above embedded link, but I found it unusably small to read the text. Instead, it's much easier if you follow this link to view the Google Docs presentation at full size: The Subprime Primer

Apparently, Norwegian stick figures have hats that make them look like Canadian Mounties.

"Undiscovered Talent?"

Jen told me that one of the girls on this season of American Idol turned out to not actually be an amateur; she'd already had a real record out. Jen thought she heard it was Kristy Lee Cook, the girl currently hailing from Selma, OR (the one riding horses and such in the color piece on her).

I came across a link at Yahoo Music a few minutes ago talking about how one of the contestants already had a deal in the past. I clicked it, thinking I'd get the full story on the Cook girl..but no, it turned out to be about Carly, the Irish girl with tons of tats.

In the comments on that Yahoo Music page, I saw a link to a whole other page. This page details all of the Top 24's past brushes with commercial success (or lack thereof)...there are a lot of contestants who aren't exactly out of the blue, never seen before talent.

White Chocolate Margarita Mousse

I meant to post this shortly after the Super Bowl, but Jen had my camera in her purse (as usual). I made a white chocolate margarita mousse to take to the party we went to (at Eric & Jen's). I've made this recipe before; it is out of the Chocolate Passion book that I've had for a few years.

Here is a bunch (22 oz, if I recall) of El Rey, waiting to be melted down:


Of course, there were a ton of eggs (copious amounts of heavy cream not pictured):


A whole bunch of lime zest (I hate zesting!) mixed in -- it ended up looking like chives!


And of course, the ingredient most people cared about:


Finally, assembling them at the party: sugaring the glass rims, putting in a dollop of mousse, and topping with a candied lime slice.


And no, I have no idea why I forgot to take a picture of a finished one!

Valentine's Dinner

...turned out pretty much right on the money. Rather than go out for dinner this year, Jen wanted us to stay in and cook.

Jen found an awesome recipe on allrecipes that came out just right: Crab-Stuffed Filet Mignon with Whiskey Peppercorn Sauce. I should have taken pictures. Anyway, it came out great, although we now agree with the people who commented on the recipe, stating that the listed duration is pretty optimistic. We were pretty close: I think it took us about 2 hours, and that included me running out to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up a large cast-iron skillet (somehow I didn't own one yet). I thought I'd find a bunch of Lodge cast iron stuff at L&T and BBB...but no! It seems cast iron is more scarce than I thought: L&T only had an Emeril cast iron square grill that was only available as a freebie when purchasing a whole Emeril set. I ended up finding the same item for sale separately at BBB (but still no Lodge). Cheap, in any case: $20 for a 10" skillet, $25 for the square grill version of the same thing.

We also made a spinach salad that we make often (toasted pumpkin seeds, red onion, dried tart cherries, and -- this time -- avocado (normally peppered goat cheese, but I forgot to pick it up), all in an oil and dijon dressing.

I also got out a nice Chateauneuf du Pape that I'd had on the rack for years. I tried to bring it to my birthday dinner at The Driskill this year, but they don't allow corkage anymore. It turned out to have mellowed nicely. It was a 1996 Paul Coulon et Fils 'Boisrenard':


I then mentioned that I had a hankering for ice cream, and was about to grab some vanilla out of the freezer. Jen told me no, and made me go read at the computer for 'about 10 minutes'. When she called me back in, this was on the counter:



It is a chocolate ginger bundt cake with a bourbon sauce on top and was damn good. I had forwarded this recipe along months ago when I first saw it, and I guess Jen filed it away for later use! All of the flower petals around it for decoration were apparently courtesy of Matt (apparently he had some fading tulips at his place...maybe from the big weekend prior? ;)

Land Use Restrictions: The Hard Dollars

I'd often heard that advocates of highly restrictive land use policies could be motivated by more than environmentalist and idealized urban planning goals: the increase in the value of their own homes due to the housing scarcity that this creates (see: the Bay Area).

I came across this link talking about a study done on Seattle housing prices in recent years. It concluded that roughtly $200,000 of the rise in the average home cost was due to land use restrictions (that's 88% of the total average cost increase)!

Lengthening The Lead

-4.9%

Economic Madness

If anyone doubts how far left Hillary and Obama can be on some things, check out this crazy tidbit from the WSJ (emphasis added):

There are actually two versions of comparable worth legislation, the Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. The former is co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama; the principal sponsor of the latter is Sen. Hillary Clinton (Mr. Obama is a co-sponsor). Both would push companies to set wages based not on supply and demand -- that is the free market -- but on some notion of social utility. The goal is to ensure that jobs performed mostly by men (say, truck drivers) are not paid more than those performed mostly by women (paralegals, perhaps).

And I thought the 'living wage' people were pushing clueless economics!