I'm the Dalai Lama

Google has a tool called "Google Correlate", related to their "Google Flu Trends" tool. If you click on this "Google Correlate link", you'll see it open to the phrase "tea party".

What search phrase best correlates with "tea party"? Answer: "firearms dealers"! Ewwww!

Correlations with "republican" came up "celebrity republicans". Here are a few, e.g., Chuck Norris and Mel Gibson, not the brightest sparks, but beloved by firearms folk.

For comparison, here is a list of celebrity democrats, e.g., Natalie Portman and Tom Hanks. Overall, I like the people on this list better than the celebrity republicans, and that's mostly without knowing their politics a priori. Hypothesis: Portman & Hanks are smarter than Norris & Gibson.

For correlations with "democrat". the second highest term is "am i a democrat". Of course, the phrase "democrat" will correlate with "am i a democrat", lest you wonder whether democrats don't know they are democrats. I searched on "am i a democrat", and found a test at The Political Compass. In a passing moment of humility, I decided to check whether I am a democrat.  The results of my test are below.

JFR's alleged political compass

Famous people's political compasses

As you can see, the Political Compass website's test puts me squarely with the Dalai Lama!  And right next to Nelson Mandela.  These people are not bad company.

But they've got my economic (left-right) direction wrong. Having graduated from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, I should have certified neo-liberal credentials. I would guess that the error is in the test's questions about regulation of business.  I believe in the power of markets, but I also think that government must regulate businesses, to ensure they operate within the law, to prevent their misleading consumers, and to protect third parties and the environment from the drive for profit.  A belief that markets should be well-regulated is hardly the same as being a communist. I think the political compass needs a third axis about justice.

Update. Here's a beautiful example of how government intervention can improve an economy: the Indian government's program to provide identification to poor people will allow the government to greatly reduce corruption and slash market-distorting subsidies.  The modern American tea party libertarian firearms-toting Republican would cry that this is a ghastly bloated government intervention in the private market. The job of government is, in part, to make markets work better.  If you want kids to play well together, you have to keep them out of the street and watch the bully.

Update 2. Read President Obama's interview for Time Magazine. Note particularly his comments about regulation.

The Republican vow of loyalty to Grover Norquist

I saw Casino Jack last night, nice movie with Kevin Spacey, about Jack Abramoff. The movie was entertaining, despite the foul mouths of the main characters, but the Republican corruption was depressing. Grover Norquist figured briefly in the film, involved with Abramoff's dirty money, as one who got away scot free.

But Republican corruption is not what I want to discuss right now.  I want to discuss formal pledged and signed Republican disloyalty to American welfare.

Grover Norquist has conned a large number of American lawmakers (nearly all Republican) into signing the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", which is a promise never to support any proposal which will either increase taxes or reduce deductions. Such a proposal is obviously detrimental to America's welfare, and you can easily see why.

The optimal tax level is something that must change over time, because economic conditions change over time. Further, tax levels should change differently for different types of tax payers, sometimes rising on one type, and lowering for others, and then later changing. Shouldn't congressman be open to whatever was necessary to improve America, as opposed to whatever was necessary to obstruct whatever was necessary to improve America? And surely a major change in America's welfare would strongly motivate a change in the tax policies from those of the Bush Administration?

Ask your congressmen if they have greater loyalty to American welfare than they do to Grover Norquist. If your congressman is on this list, http://s3.amazonaws.com/atrfiles/files/files/091411-federalpledgesigners.pdf, please vote them out!

Follow-up: The Washington Post has an interesting set of graphics. Make your own judgements on them. I think we need a straight Democratic ticket in the next election: we need good government, not a pledge to obstruction.

A comment on some of the current public debate

Some people don't seem to be understanding this post, at least not correctly.  So let me be obvious.

Many government regulations are designed to protect the public from rapacious businesses. The screeching Republican calls for "less regulation" are caving to a very few very wealthy people, who very much do not like anyone watching their operations.  When those people are told not to steal, they scream that the rules are bad for the economy and un-American.

Clear enough now?

Two views on the budget battle

Karl Rove, that genius of Republican spin, thinks "Obama owns the debt-ceiling fiasco".

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics, thinks that it's the GOP that has gone insane.

Have you tried it yourself? Can you do it without raising revenue? Do you want to do with without raising revenue?

Would I lie to you?

Two views on the budget battle

Karl Rove, that genius of Republican spin, thinks "Obama owns the debt-ceiling fiasco".

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics, thinks that it's the GOP that has gone insane.

Have you tried it yourself? Can you do it without raising revenue? Do you want to do with without raising revenue?

http://youtu.be/Uhpu2N4rQZM

In Honour of Khan Mohammad

"He was killed because he wanted to run the school."

This man was courageous and good. The world, especially Afghanistan, is worse without him.

Republicans repent!

"Arithmetic has a well known liberal bias." - Paul Krugman

" 'Republicans = delusion.' " -John Quiggin

"Expertise is evidence of error" - Jacob Weisberg

See the Quiggin article for the best overview of current politics.  I so hope he is correct!  Krugman is more pessimistic, if not cranky (in his words), but at least he gave us a nice video.

Ben Franklin's sister and "Republican values"

Friends, I urge you to read this excellent essay in the NY Times by Jill Lepore. Prof. Lepore writes of Ben Franklin's impoverished sister Jane, pointing out the irony of the current Republican proposals to cut care for the poor, women's health, and education.

Image from http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/04/24/opinion/24leporeimg/24leporeimg-articleLarge.jpg

Dieting: "Don't tell anyone"?

CNN has a typically chatty entry about a woman who lost a lot of weight.

Her doctor gave her these four tips:

1. Eat 8 ounces of food every 3 hours.
2. No sugary drinks.
3. Do not skip meals.
4. Do not tell anyone what you're doing.

The first three make sense, from what I've read of the scientific literature. But the last? How does not telling anyone help me stay on a diet?  Maybe this turns dieting into a personal vow?  It seems to contradict many reports that say having a buddy system and being accountable to someone else is effective. For myself, I've found it much easier to stay on task when I share the task with someone else.

I've designed Wagmu to be private information. You can't easily share what you're doing with other people, and neither can other people see what you're doing.  So it fits with not telling anyone, the personal vow approach.  But I'm not sure that's the right thing. Comments welcome.

"Arithmetic has a well-known liberal bias"

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman writes on the Ryan budget proposal. The Republicans seek to sell out American to the corporations. At what point do we say "Stop"?

Google's perfect translation

This YouTube page has Richie Valens with "La Bamba".



The user wrote the words to the song as:

Para bailar la bamba, Para bailar la bamba, Se necesita una poca de gracia. Una poca de gracia pa mi pa ti. Arriba y arriba Y arriba y arriba, por ti seré, Por ti? seré Por ti seré. Yo no soy marinero. Yo no soy marinero, soy capitan. Soy capitan. Soy capitan. Bamba bamba...

Just for fun, I put his text into Google Translate, and got back this, which I think is absolutely perfect:

Want to dance, To dance the Bamba, You need a little grace. A little grace pa mi pa ti. Up and up and up and up, for you will be, For you I will For you I will. I am not a sailor. I am not a sailor, I'm captain. I'm captain. I'm captain. Bamba bamba ...

If you love the earth, then kill your cat

An NY Times article re-iterates a conclusion I've heard before: cats are bad for the environment.

Ecological disaster.  Image from NY Times.

I dream of a future where we are all Japanese

Beautiful NY Times article

Repeal the Price-Anderson Act!

Nuclear energy is often hailed as the solution to climate change.  Of course, before that, it was the solution to the oil crisis.  I think nuclear energy might be a solution to these problems, possibly with the new reactor designs that people are thinking about. But we need to get the price signals right.


In their article “Environment & Energy: Catastrophic Liabilities” (in Measuring and Managing Federal Financial Risk), Geoffrey Heal and Howard Kunreuther point out that the Price-Anderson Act puts the cost of nuclear catastrophe squarely onto the taxpayers.  It's well worth the time to read their article. Without this subsidy, the nuclear industry would not be commercially viable.  Think about that: the financial viability of nuclear energy requires that you personally pay for the catastrophic risk.

Should a restaurant put the cost of sickening a customer onto the city government?  Should the local town pay for the long term care of someone injured by a surgeon's malpractice?  Should you cover me when I smash up someone else's car?  I don't think so.  I think we should each be required to buy the appropriate insurance to cover our own business liabilities.

Again, I think nuclear energy might be a solution. But at least let's have the nuclear power companies bear all the costs.

Chocolate and the PMS diet?

My good friend Maria asked whether chocolate is suggested for the PMS diet. She has a knack for this sort of straight-to-the-mark intuition.

As far as I can tell, based on the data from Wagmu and the Brazilian study, just 3 grams of 70% dark gets the oleic acid you need!  Add 15 grams of walnuts for your alpha-linolenic acid, and 45 grams of dry-roasted sunflower seeds for linoleic acid and vitamin E.  A teaspoon of cod liver oil supplies your omega-3 fatty acid.

To re-cap:
- 3 grams extra dark chocolate (that's just one little square),
- 15 grams of walnuts (a heaping tablespoon),
- 45 grams of dry-roasted sunflower seeds (3 tablespoons should do it),
- a teaspoon of cod liver oil.

The above list will go a long ways toward sorting out your essential fatty acids.  By the way, I eat all that every day.

However, the study also included omega-6 18:3 n6 ccc gamma-linolenic fatty acid (GAL).  Unfortunately, I can't find a good food source of  GAL, other than Canola Harvest brand margarine.  You would have to eat 5 tablespoons of the stuff to get what was in the study pills. And I can't figure out how that brand got so much of it in their product, because GAL does not seem to be in the separate ingredients.  They must have processed it somehow.

GAL is not widely available in foods, which implies we shouldn't need it. Indeed, your body produces GAL, but apparently not enough sometimes. If you really want to duplicate the study, I think you'll have to add  primrose oil or borage oil  (neither of which is in the USDA food database, and therefore not in Wagmu).

The PMS Diet?

Back when the Iraq war was beginning, Bush's aides gave him daily updates on the conflict. One time, they told him that two Brazilian soldiers had been killed.  "Oh, my God!!!" he exclaimed,  "That's horrible!!!"  His aides were taken aback.  "Yes, Mr. President, it is horrible. But why are you reacting so much more strongly than usual?"  He paused, then said, "Oh. Well, how many is a Brazilian?"

Quick segway to premenstrual syndrome.  I've never had it and won't ever get it, LOL!  However, four Brazilian researchers, a great many, recently wrote an article, "Essential fatty acids for premenstrual syndrome..."  They showed that consumption of several essential fatty acids probably helps reduce symptoms of PMS.

What did those women take, and how can you get it?  The key bit is this: "...each 1-gram capsule contained a mean of 210 mg of gamma linolenic acid, 175 mg of oleic acid, 345 mg of linoleic acid, 250 mg of other polyunsaturated acids and 20 mg of vitamin E."  The paper also says, "Improvement in symptoms was higher when the 2-gram dose was used." So as far as I can tell, here's what you need:

- 420 mg of gamma linolenic acid,
- 350 mg of oleic acid,
- 690 mg of linoleic acid,
- 40 mg of vitamin E.
- 500 mg of some other unspecified polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Now you could run out to your local pharmacy to seek a pill with those ingredients.  You may get lucky and find something from Hebron Farmaceutica.  You would pay a lot of money for it.

Or you could fire up Wagmu, and change your Nutrient Settings to include:
- Fatty acid ω6 18:3 n6 ccc γ-linolenic.  That's gamma-linolenic acid.
- Fatty acid 18:1c oleic. There's more than one isomer of oleic acid, and the Brazilian paper doesn't which say kind they used. But the USDA SR 22 database documentation, page 19, indicates "oleic" means the 18:1c isomer.
- Linoleic acid.  Watch those spellings, as linoleic acid is different from linolenic acid.

While you're at it, you may as well add 

- α-linolenic acid" (that's alpha-linolenic acid), and 

- "Fatty acid ω3 22:6 n3 DHA" (that's your omega-3 fatty acid).

Set the quantities as you please.  If you don't know what to enter, have a look at the official report, "Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, ...", maybe focusing on pages 1324-1325. (A gram is the same as a thousand milligrams, 1g=1000mg, which makes me think of my dad's MG sports car, which I cracked up into a 1000mg pieces when I was 16.)

Sorry, I can't make the quantities easy for you yet.  In the next month or so, I hope to load appropriate default values for some of these nutrients to all Wagmu members' Nutrient Settings.  The Wagmu disclaimer applies here.

Wagmu will already have vitamin E listed for your needs as recommended by the U.S. government, but you may wish to change the amount.

Then in the Food Plan, type in what you ate today.  You'll almost certainly see that you're short of many nutrients, not just these fatty acids.

Finally, you can use the Suggest button to help you adjust your food quantities, and add new foods, to get what you need.  Click the pumpkin!  You will have to change your diet!

Supposedly a Brazilian can improve your life.  I wouldn't know.  But maybe four Brazilians can improve your life.  Good job, Edilberto Filho, José Lima, João Neto and Ulisses Montarroyos.

Better Bittman Bars

I'm a fan of Mark Bittman.  Brilliant chef, a great writer, and even an entertaining actor in his videos.

As part of a string of articles, he recently gave a recipe for a Almond-Apricot Granola Bars.  In the comments section, I wrote:

I took the time to type this recipe into my nutrition website, www.wagmu.com. It is recipe #13592 Bittman's Almond-Apricot Granola Bars. Wagmu indicates that the recipe costs about $1.68/serving, when divided into 8 servings. That's a modestly-priced granola bar.

However, if you add this to a food plan in Wagmu, and click the "Suggest" button, Wagmu tries to take it out. That implies that this recipe, however yummy, is quite expensive relative to the nutrition it provides.

In contrast, Wagmu will encourage consumption of plain oats ("Cereal, oats, regular and quick and instant, not fortified, dry") and milk. It's all the embellishments which make the oats both yummy and expensive!

Perhaps a less expensive (for the nutrition) recipe could be had by trading the almond butter for peanut butter, using sunflower seeds and a few walnuts instead of almonds, trading the apricots for raisins or dried currants, and reducing the honey. It probably won't taste as good!

Here's an update on this.  I developed another recipe, #13593 Peanut Butter Granola Bars, specifically to find a recipe that was both cheaper and more nutritious. Today's experiment with this was quite successful. Yum!  (He says to wait 90 minutes 'til they cool, but I couldn't wait that long for mine.)  And only $0.62 per 71.7 g serving, versus $1.68 per his 73 g serving.  A dollar a bar less!  Next, compare the nutrients.  The Peanut Butter Granola bars have more of almost every nutrient.  Far more nutrient bang for your buck.

Nutrient profile for Bittman's almond apricot bars ($1.68 each), compared to Raffensperger's peanut butter bars ($0.62 each).

Wagmu's powerful optimizing Suggest function will rip the Bittman bars right out.  But add the substitute, and you can make a complete day's plan:

#7522 Coffee with milk, 3 servings.

#13593 Peanut Butter Granola Bars, 2 servings.

#7526 Egg on toast with herbs, 2 servings.

Spinach, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 190 grams.

Peppers, sweet, green, raw, 100 grams.

Fish oil, cod liver 4.3 grams.

Milk, reduced fat, fluid, 2% milkfat, with added vitamin A and vitamin D, two 300 gram servings.

Apples, raw, with skin medium (3" dia), one.

Here's the nutrients for this food plan. I rounded the food quantities, so the potassium is a bit short, and energy a bit high.  But just about perfect!

You can force Bittman's bars into a diet, but it will be more expensive.

Regulation versus "free" markets

I like markets.  I like being able to go to the store and buy stuff.  I'm glad that I don't have to own a cow to get milk. But problems with markets arise when some people's behaviour imposes costs on others.

I don't like thieves in any guise.  Those folk looting Christchurch phone generators after the earthquake are bad.  Of course, the looters don't care until they're caught, and then they bear the force of the law.

What about those folk looting America's water for natural gas?  They are like other thieves, except that they've managed to influence law-makers, so their behaviour is ignored.  But these people are imposing costs on hundreds of thousands of other people.

The Chinese currency intervention is among the most epic abuses of the commons, almost as terrific as global warming in terms of sheer cost imposed on others. Their behaviour is clearly anti-market.

"Free market" to me means "anything goes".  People are free to operate their businesses in any way they like, without regard to the costs imposed on others. Think John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, James Inhofe, anti-regulation.  The destruction of American watersheds and the Chinese currency intervention are "free market" because those people have the freedom to behave as they wish, without regulation.

Surely the economy would be better off if those costs were eliminated!  This is not "pro-regulation" or "leftist" or "Obama-mania".  It is simply about lowering the total cost to society.  We would all be richer if the market, and the commons, were properly regulated. That takes good government, not "less" government.

What's the best way to regulate the commons?  Here's a recent blog post, though, by one of the best minds on the problem, Robert Stavins.  Note the link to his full article.

I am an American and I don't need a gun.

Beauty in print

The NYT has an opinion article about peace in the Middle East.  It's beautiful.  Made me feel good.

Here's an NYT article on calcium and vitamin D. Well-done, but lacking the emotional bang of Mid-East peace.

It's not too late to start training

Another brilliant NY Times article, this one on exercise and the elderly.  Wanna live longer and be healthier?  Then exercise, and exercise hard!  The article admits that motivation is the big problem.

Motivation! Ugh.  I believe strongly in exercise.  I want to exercise.  I imagine my self as fit as my mountain-climbing colleague Paul.  Then when it actually comes time to go to the gym, I'm too tired, I've got finish this chore, it's raining,... LOL!

Can you solve the U.S. deficit problem?

The NY Times has a nice "Budget Puzzle".  I saved $1.612 trillion, but dare not say how!  In any case, I think it's a nice example of journalism and information technology.  Well done, NYT!

Yet another update on the earthquake

Hang in there, everyone.  The land beneath our feet is quieting.

This graph shows estimated energy by 4-hour period. To create the graph, I first converted the Richter scale to energy as energy = 31.6^Richter_value, then summed those values by 4-hour block, and then took the base-10 logarithm of the total.  Based on my friend Stephen's point that, in August, Christchurch had earthquakes averaging Richter 2, I cut the vertical axis at the corresponding energy level of 3.

Updated quake intensity

Last night was bumpy - looks like we had the second worst shock since the first.

Modest good news on Christchurch quakes

The after-shocks of Christchurch's big quake have been making me nervous.  They didn't bother me yesterday, but this afternoon, I was anxious.

So I thought I'd look at the data. I got this from GNS's Quake Search database.  Irritating interface, with the data 12 hours off, but I got there in the end.  I graphed the intensity of the earthquakes over time, and here's what it looks like. On the left, you can see the big one, above 7.  On the right, you an see the high 4's that made me jump today.

New Zealand should add vitamin D to milk (U.S. readers can ignore this)

Since Wagmu 2.0 has been up, I've been actively logging and optimizing my daily menu.  I put in a so-so food plan, and Wagmu Suggest helps me turn it into a great food plan, even though I've limited my energy intake to about 1,250 calories.

There's just one exception:  Wagmu keeps telling me to eat salmon, sardines, or cod liver oil, because I can't get enough vitamin D!  And I need it. Here's a recent article on it, from the NY Times.

It's mid-winter here in Christchurch, and the grey drizzle is depressing.  So I'm not getting vitamin D from sunlight.

In the U.S., milk is fortified with vitamins A and D by law.  If I tell Wagmu that I'm drinking milk with A & D, then I can get my vitamin D.  Conclusion?  New Zealand should require milk fortification with vitamin D!

On a trivial matter, I created a recipe for cabbage soup, (Wagmu recipe #13583 Cabbage soup), and built an optimized diet around it.  Try it yourself.  But it's not the "Cabbage Soup Diet" anymore!

A modest suggestion for Ground Zero

The NY Times (my favorite paper, I guess) has an article about a proposed Muslim center at the foot of the new World Trade Center complex. I'm truly torn myself about the idea. On the one hand, terrorists might feel like they triumphed by replacing the WTC with a mosque. On the other hand, it would demonstrate America's tolerance.

My solution: put two mosques there, little tiny ones, one Sunni and one Shiite. I mean really tiny, like a good-sized closet. And put two tiny churches there as well, one Catholic and one Presbyterian. Add temples for Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Bahá'í. Make room for a few more, and even a couple of spaces that could rotate through the smaller religions on a monthly basis.

Put these mosques, churches, and temples in a circular courtyard, facing each other, with a shared entrance. Put in big clear windows on the courtyard side, so worshippers can see the people of other religions worshipping, too.

And on 11 September each year, let the WTC religious groups join together in offering each other and all passersby blessings and a modest free breakfast.

Announcing Wagmu 2.0!

Wagmu 2.0 is now online! Save your health, save your wealth, and save the world!

Wagmu is a powerful food planning system, designed to help you get 100% of your nutritional requirements while saving you money. Wagmu food plans naturally tend to use less meat, sugar, and processed foods, so your menu will be better for the environment, too.

We've just released a new version. The most exciting new feature is Wagmu Suggest. Wagmu Suggest will save you money and improve your diet. After logging your foods for a day, you'll probably see that you were short of some nutrients, and had too much of others. Click the pumpkin on the toolbar, and Wagmu Suggest adjusts your food quantities to get a better nutrient score.

Often, even with Suggest's power, the foods you've selected can't make a good food plan. So Suggest loads the Wagmu Suggest Dropdown, right on the existing food dropdown. The Wagmu Suggest Dropdown recommends foods which improve your nutrients and lower your costs. Pick a food you like, and click Suggest again. You can control how Wagmu Suggest behaves with radio buttons, such as to prevent Suggest from giving you too much broccoli, or not enough chocolate. I've found Wagmu Suggest to be a lot of fun, and I like creating food plans which are both nutritious and inexpensive.

We've added thousands of new foods, from the U.S. government's FNDDS database. Better still, Wagmu 2.0 knows about the cost of food in approximate U.S. dollars. While not perfect, no other diet website shows costs at all. (In Wagmu 3.0, we hope to let you customize your food costs, and Wagmu 3.0 will also have exercise planning and grocery lists.) Wagmu Suggest tries to help you lower the cost of your diet, while also improving your nutrient profile.

Wagmu 2.0 has search features. You can search for recipes, rate them, and see their cost. Even cooler, the new Food Plan Search lets you find entire food plans, and sort them. You can sort by Pumpkin Rating (everybody's rating of how good that plan is), by cost, and by % nutrients scaled to your own custom nutritional requirements. You can then copy those food plans to your own calendar, and edit them as you wish.

We've been playing with the website for a couple years now, moving slowly. The technical problem is to have you select one food at a time from a restricted set of 15,000, and that seems to require a somewhat complicated interface. Please be patient in getting started. We have posted some help pages, with more on the way. I'd be grateful for feedback. Just click on the Wagmu comment link.

I still haven't worked out a business model for this website, despite having spent a lot of money on it. I don't want ads, because the relevant ads are food and health related, and the point of the website is to short-circuit that marketing! Eventually, Wagmu will probably require a subscription, but until then, enjoy the powerful advice for free.

Letter to Mitchell Rogers, Lincoln High School, Lincoln, New Zealand

This post is a response to "The role of coal in sustainable energy solutions for New Zealand," by Mitchell Rogers.

Dear Mr. Rogers:

I was interested to read your prize-winning essay propounding the use of coal in New Zealand.

You made quite a strong final statement:

"I believe coal mining in New Zealand is sustainable because the footprint is very small overall and the economic return per hectare is huge compared with other land uses. The role of coal in sustainable energies is to produce a long lasting, efficient energy source to provide all humans with access to electricity, steel and other industries and to continue living our lives around the world and in New Zealand as we are accustomed to."

Please have a look at recent comments by 255 of the world's leading scientists, "Climate Change and the Integrity of Science." Please also have a look at Michael Specter's presentation, "The danger of science denial."

Make a note to yourself to re-read those sentences in twenty years. See if those words still makes sense. Coal use is brutally unsustainable, the dirtiest energy we have. And we can't keep living as we've been accustomed. We have to change.

I note that the contest was sponsored by Solid Energy, a leading producer of coal. You've been used to produce pure New Zealand greenwash.

Wagmu 2.0 & Decisions on The Menu

We watched "Julie & Julia" on Friday night. It's a lovely cheerful film about Julia Child and gorgeous food. It reminded me of our fabulous meal over Easter weekend at the Quickenberry Lodge.

Attracted by Meryl Streep and her character's obvious delight in cooking and eating, I spent much of this weekend looking at Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Aside from being hopelessly intimidated, I see some discouraging issues with this kind of cooking.

First issue: this kind of cooking takes a lot of time. The top chefs think nothing of taking 20 minutes simply to carmelize the onions or reduce a sauce to concentrate the flavour. Don't get me wrong - I love fine food. But I can't fit that kind of prep time into my life 7 days a week.

Second issue: this kind of cooking has a lot of fat. What are the three ingredients to French food? Answer: butter, butter, and butter. The typical French recipe for a super-food like cauliflower, cheap and high nutrient, has a half cup of cream per serving, plus the butter and Parmesan cheese. I'd love it! But, despite Dr. Atkins, those of us who need to reduce our waistlines are not going to succeed very well on that much fat.

Third issue: this kind of cooking is expensive. The recipe for beef bourgignon, for example, calls a full bottle of wine. Yum! Bring it on! - just don't make me pay for it, at least not every day. A modest look at the forums and comments around the web show that people are worried about the cost of food, especially in the current economic slowdown. Not everybody can afford a lot of wine, cream, and Parmesan cheese.

But I'm so attracted to it, nonetheless! I wanna eat the good stuff! But these decisions have tradeoffs.

Here's a chart of the tradeoffs. I've put the good stuff, palatability and nutrition, on the vertical axes, and the bad stuff, prep time and $ cost, on the horizontal axes.

Our ideal diet should look like Meryl Streep - tall and thin. Wouldn't it be great to find a nutritious diet that tasted great, but was quick to make and cheap, too?

Unfortunately, our actual diets tend to look like Danny DeVito, short and with a big belly. Not really all that good, not really all that cheap, but fast. And not too nourishing.
On the bottom left, I put raw cabbage: not really all that tasty, but low cost, great nutrition profile, and no prep time. Just buy, pull off a piece, and stuff it in your mouth. I guess you can buy it organic if you're worried that it might need washing first. Let's call this the Linda Hunt profile. (Great actress, but still the wrong character for the boss on "NCIS LA", which is not nearly as good as the original "NCIS".)

Now look at the bottom right, the Cauliflower Gratin. Huge on prep time, huge on palatability, huge on cost, and pretty good nutrition. I gave it a slightly lower nutrition rank due to its fat. But this profile is a Julia Child profile. She was a huge woman, 6 feet, two inches. She loved cooking, and she loved eating. I'd love to eat like that, but I really shouldn't!

So there's this whole confusing issue of what we want to do, what we should do, what we are able to do, and what we actually do.

I want Cauliflower Gratin. I should probably eat plain blanched cauliflower. I'm not able to make Cauliflower Gratin, at least not very well, because the broiler on our ancient second-hand stove isn't working, and I don't have the cream and Parmesan cheese anyway. What will I actually do? Dunno yet. I was planning the Gratin for lunch, but ended up with toast. LOL!

Somewhere among the infinite set of recipes, surely one cauliflower recipe out there is reasonably easy to make, doesn't have too much fat, and tastes good.

What I really want is a system that helps me with the search. I want to find those Meryl Streep diets. Google's great, but not enough, as on-line recipes never cover all four of palatability, nutrition, prep time, and cost. Enter Wagmu 2.0! Stayed tuned for the big launch sometime this year.

Intel pinched my cool idea

I recently proposed the idea of a "consistency checker", a computer program to compare two sets of text (e.g., Sarah Palin quotes here and here, to the New York Times, or Bin Laden quotes to the Koran). The program would report the degree of agreement between the two texts.

Well, Intel and UC Berkeley have done a pretty close approximation with "Dispute Finder". While still early days for their code, it's a great start. It's an easy Firefox add-on. Then try a search for "global warming hoax", and see how much text turns up highlighted pink in your browser.

I'll tag this post under "corruption", as I think Dispute Finder, and a thousand similar programs to come, will bring a new level of transparency in governance. Watch out you Wachovian beauty queen!