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Dam Da?

[ 141 ] December 12, 2013 | bspencer

I read this article –about sneaking Vietnamese fish sauce into dishes– with interest, because learning shortcuts for how to deepen flavors in a dish is passion of mine.

A couple of years ago, I tried a “Cook’s Illustrated” recipe that promised tasty chicken pot pie in an hour and a half. One of their secrets to getting slow-simmered flavored into the pie filling was to fold in browned mushrooms and a teeny bit of soy sauce and tomato paste. You didn’t know the paste and soy sauce were there, but they were, selflessly adding a lot of flavor and taking no credit. It was a great recipe.

I also recently made a Rachel Ray umami-marinated flank steak. The marinade had stuff like anchovies, soy sauce, and sun-dried tomato paste in it. The steak was delicious.

I made a quick chicken pot pie the other night (using store-bought crusts) but forgot my flavor-boosting tricks from the last time I attempted the dish. It was good, but was absolutely missing the depth of flavor the CI secret ingredients lent.

All this has got me thinking about umami-possessing and flavor-deepening ingredients. Do you have any tricks to or techniques for lending slow-cooked flavors to quick dishes? Any flavor-boosters you swear by?

Everything in the Oceans is Dying

[ 36 ] December 12, 2013 | Erik Loomis

I assume anyone paying attention to what is happening to the ocean ecosystem also drinks heavily.

“One of the most misogynistic proposals I’ve ever seen in the Michigan Legislature”

[ 34 ] December 12, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

Which, of course, didn’t stop it from being passed:

Both chambers of the Michigan legislature have passed a measure banning insurance coverage for abortion in private health plans. And because of the way the legislation was put forward, it is set to become law despite the objections of both the state’s Democratic minority and the veto of the Republican governor.

The votes Wednesday added Michigan to the eight states that already have laws restricting abortion coverage in private insurance plans, including those sold on the exchange. Women on the state’s Medicaid are already barred from using it to cover abortion except in very narrow cases.

In a charged hearing Wednesday, Michigan Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer told the story of her own rape and called the legislation “one of the most misogynistic proposals I’ve ever seen in the Michigan Legislature,” according to the Detroit Free Press. Abortion coverage will be available to women who purchase separate riders. But as Whitmer put it, “This tells women who are raped … that they should have thought ahead and bought special insurance for it.”

“The fact that rape insurance is even being discussed by this body is repulsive,” she added.

Ah, the tea party, all about freedom.

Comedy of the New Gilded Age

[ 11 ] December 11, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Distressing that this joke actually resonates:

According to Kennedy, one of the most pressing concerns associated with rapid aristocratization is the drastic transformation of the metropolitan landscape in a way that fails to maximize livable space.

A three-block section of [Chicago neighborhood] Wicker Park that once accommodated eight families, two vintage clothing stores, a French cleaners, and a gourmet bakery has been completely razed to make way for a private livery stable and carriage house,” Kennedy said. “The space is now entirely unusable for affordable upper-income condominium housing. No one can live there except for the odd stable boy or footman who gets permission to sleep in the hayloft.”

Many of those affected by the ostentatious reshaping of their once purely upmarket neighborhoods said that they often wish for a return back to the privileged communities they helped to overdevelop just a few years ago. Among the first to feel the effects of the encroaching aristocracy have been local business owners like Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident Neil Getz.

“Around here, you used to be able to get a Fair-Trade latte and a chocolate-chip croissant for only eight bucks,” said Getz, who is planning to move back in with his parents after being forced out of the lease on his organic grocery store by a harpsichord purveyor. “Now it’s all tearooms and private salon gatherings catered with champagne and suckling pig. Who can afford that?”

The Real War on Christmas

[ 98 ] December 11, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Forget O’Reilly’s fears of liberals saying “Happy Holidays” to each other. There was a real war on Christmas in this country and it was waged by those lovely people who settled in New England, the Puritans.

For the Puritans — in England and in the New England colonies — Christmas was a, well, un-Christian imposition on what should be a perfectly normal December 25th, thank you very much. Sure, the Sabbath was holy, Puritans believed, but there was no scriptural basis for celebrating or resting on Christmas Day. It wasn’t a real religious holiday.

Here’s why. Increase Mather, who was the Puritan Michael Jordan of hating Christmas, grumbled in 1687 :

The early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.

Pagan holidays are pretty fun, and Saturnalia was an absolute bonanza of revelry. So you can see why Western society was keen on keeping it around by aligning a celebration of the birth of Jesus with the existing winter feast. But not Increase.

Particularly upsetting to Increase Mather was the tradition of inversion associated with the holiday. Stephen Nissenbaum’s The Battle For Christmas goes into this in much more detail, but essentially, English Christmas at the time was all about class inversion, as was the pagan Saturnalia festival. Children served as bishops, servants as masters, that sort of thing. That inversion carried over into the exchange of goods (presents) from the rich to the poor, as a much more aggressive prototype of what we might recognize as charitable giving — think drunk, adult, trick-or-treating. And of course, there was feasting and drinking. It was fun, different from the everyday, and could get a little bit scary. In a way, Increase and his ilk were right: the rituals of Christmas had little to do in particular with Christianity.

Fun people.

Have a Holly Jolly Whatever

[ 19 ] December 11, 2013 | Robert Farley

Need a Christmas gift, but can’t imagine what your good-for-nothing friends and ne’er do well relatives might want or need? For the person who wants for and/or deserves nothing, I cannot recommend the Lawyers, Guns and Money CafePress store highly enough. The implements of alcoholism are well regarded, most notably the LGM flask (pictured right).

But what if you hate the holidays, and in fact count yourself as a soldier in the War on Christmas?  Then I must strongly recommend a book that is a) about war and b) will arrive far too late for Christmas.  I am, of course, talking about Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force. Consider: “Santa Claus” operates a high speed aircraft capable of delivering precision ordnance all over the world in a remarkably short period of time.  He is apparently immune to interception, ground fire, and the most sophisticated surface to air missile networks, and apparently does not require fighter escort. Can there be any doubt that Santa is, in fact, a devotee of the works of Giulio Douhet? If we are to win the War on Christmas, we must make careful appraisal of the worldview and tactics of our foes. Grounded is the book that every anti-Christmas crusader needs on his or her shelf.

Law school applications continue their steep decline

[ 103 ] December 11, 2013 | Paul Campos

Last year at this time I noted that law school applications were in something of a free fall. LSAC has just released its first data for this year’s applicant cycle, and it appears the decline continues more or less unabated.

Total applicants to ABA law schools:

2010: 87,900
2011: 78,500
2012: 67,900
2013: 59,500 (preliminary)

As of December 6th, 14,171 people had applied this cycle, which is down 13.6% year over year. 28% of all applicants had applied by this time last year; if the latter figure remains constant, that projects to 50,500 total applicants in this cycle. This would mean that 16.6% fewer people will apply to law school this year than were admitted three years ago. Indeed, if 100% of applicants were admitted and 100% enrolled, that would still produce fewer matriculants than were in the class of 2010. Of course not all applicants are admitted, although the percentage of applicants that are admitted to at least one school to which they apply has been climbing rapidly:

2004: 55.6%
2005: 58.6%
2006: 63.1%
2007: 66.1%
2008: 66.5%
2009: 67.4%
2010: 68.7%
2011: 71.1%

Meanwhile, the percentage of admitted applicants who end up enrolling has remained stable at between 86% and 88%. If we assume 75% of applicants are admitted in this cycle and 87% eventually enroll, this would produce a national first year ABA law school class of 32,950. Even if we assume 80% of applicants are admitted to at least one school to which they apply (this would be a fairly astounding figure, given that many applicants only apply to highly-ranked schools), that would still yield a first year class of just 35,150.

Total first year enrollment at ABA law schools:

2010: 52,500
2011: 48,700
2012: 44,500
2013: Unknown (most estimates seem to be in the 39,000 to 40,000 range).

As a financial matter, these effects are of course strongly cumulative. A first year class of 35,000 next fall (and note this is at the optimistic end of estimates given the analysis above) would mean that the total national enrollment over the previous three years will have been around 119,000, as compared to 153,700 from 2008-2010, i.e., there will be 22.6% fewer law students than there were four years earlier, despite a radical decline in admissions standards. Given continuing sharp increases in discounts over nominal tuition (indeed a few schools have now actually cut even nominal tuition), the decline in tuition revenue may be even greater in real terms.

1.2 Million

[ 148 ] December 11, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

It’s the number of people who have gotten health insurance since the ACA went into full effect. 803,000 of them became eligible for Medicaid under the statute signed by the neoliberal shill in the White House, a number that of course would be much higher had Obama not created the power of judicial review and nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Some Local Voices: Austerity, Homophobia, and Britain’s Waning Global Presence

[ 30 ] December 11, 2013 | Dave Brockington

Plymouth Labour Party activist John Petrie has some unequivical things to say about the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and the Conservative Party:

Following the two World Wars, successive governments expanded the state to create a fairer society that distributed wealth more equally and looked after its citizens, particularly those in need. With this new Post-War Consensus the UK gradually became a more equal place, with higher social mobility, less income inequality and state owned infrastructure that was run for the benefit of the people of our country. This state, which Cameron so gleefully discards, was earned by the suffering of many people over many years and it is sickening to see it dismantled for no other reason than ideology and greed, the very same ideology and greed that caused the crash from which we are still recovering.

Kate Taylor, a Plymouth City Councillor (also Labour) took issue with a local dinosaur who wrote a letter to the local paper proudly claiming that he is dropping his patronage of the Plymouth Evening Herald because . . . they did their job by covering local Olympic medallist diver Tom Daley’s “coming out” as being in a sam-sex relationship. The Herald is a local paper. Tom Daley is a Plymouth Olympic medallist. Mr John J Jones is a local bigot who is a regular contributor of letters-to-the-editor:

I don’t know why you have the views that you do, Mr Jones. I don’t know why you think it is fair to call me, or members of our gay community, “abhorrent”, when in my opinion, the only abhorrent thing is the fact that you pigeon-hole me as “perverted” for being attracted to, or having feelings for, another woman rather than a man. It goes without saying that those views are extremely offensive to the LGBT community, and whilst I hope you delay your boycott of The Herald for long enough to read this letter, I must admit I am somewhat relieved that I will no longer have to read such opinions in my local newspaper.

Finally, this morning I revisited a nuanced piece written by my colleague Dr. Jamie Gaskarth. He suggests that the House of Commons rejection of intervention in Syria is evidence of further British retreat from the world stage:

Lacking the capacity, and the desire to act, Britain is retreating from its role as an interventionist power. Two further developments are feeding this process. One is the democratization of war powers; the other, the juridification of foreign policy decision making.

[. . .]

In sum, reduced military capacity, public opposition, the widening of decision making to the legislature and the emphasis on international law and high standards of evidence have all combined to stop Britain intervening in Syria. If these processes continue and harden, then it is difficult to see the UK being able to act out the great power role of ‘global policeman’ in the future.

Saving Potentially Good Arguments From Stephen Marche

[ 199 ] December 11, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

Beth mentioned Stephen Marche’s dumb NYT article arguing that men shouldn’t be expected to do any housework. Jess Grose explains the dumbness, saving me the trouble.

Since this is a longstanding hobbyhorse of mine, however, like Jon Chait I think it’s worth keeping a couple issues conceptually distinct. If the first link is tl;dr, a brief summary:

  • There are some domestic tasks — basic sanitation like cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, a minimum level of organization, childrearing duties where applicable — that are necessary, and there should be a presumption of gender equity in how they’re distributed.
  • It doesn’t follow from this, however, that the equilibrium every equitable household should reach is 50s-bourgeois standards of tidiness that presumed a full-time homemaker plus paid help.  If it’s very important to you to dust every singe day or have all your clothes ironed or to never have an extraneous object on a table or floor that’s fine, but that’s like a hobby, not a fundamental household task.  Just assuming that all kinds of pointless busywork has to be done is not only a non-sequitur, under current gender norms it’s especially bad for women.

All Tragedies Great and Small

[ 82 ] December 11, 2013 | Dave Brockington

Don’t seem to be making much of a difference. In the year since Newton, CT, the states have been busy with gun legislation. On balance, they’ve relaxed restrictions, rather than making more sensible legislation that balances the rights and responsibilities of owning a firearm. 109 bills have become law in the states, of which 39 tighten regulation, while 70 go in the opposite direction.

The trend seems to be to embrace the notion that what we really need are more “good guys with guns” protecting us from the bad guys.

To break this down a little, permits are easier to obtain (28 laws loosen restrictions, while only one, Colorado, passed a law tightening regulation, and that was to prohibit on-line training for a concealed weapon permit), public carry is a lot easier (22/0), it’s easier to carry weapons in schools (nine bills passed to precisely zero! making it more difficult to carry a gun in a school), and four states have attempted to nullify federal law on the subject. There were some minor victories: Mental health is taken marginally more seriously (15 restrictive laws, versus one explicitly making it easier to restore gun rights to the formerly mentally ill), background checks (12 more rigorous, two laws easing background checks), and assault weapons are more tightly regulated in CA, CO, CT, MD, NY), while Louisiana has repealed legislation regulating “machine guns”. I’ll be spending something like seven nights in Louisiana later this month, so I’ll be sure to check this out on the ground.

It appears that we have reached something of a consensus in response to tragedy: more guns will save more lives. Except for, you know, all the empirical evidence to the contrary, which is, pretty much, all of it.

And where was the good guy with a gun to save this three year old boy in Indiana on Saturday? Presumably that good guy was his father or mother who left the loaded firearm on the countertop within easy reach. But I bet at least that they had their outlets protected.

This is one of those (many) issues where I am growing to believe that the prospects for progressive reform are bleak indeed. We can win battles in some states on marginal issues, but that appears to be it. If Newton foments change in the direction opposite to good policy, I’m not sure what can be done. There is a partisan dynamic to it of course; of the 70 bills that passed relaxing regulation, 49 were in states with unified Republican control, and 18 mixed (with only three in Democratic states). Solid Democratic states are responsible for 25 of the laws tightening regulation, while five of those bills passed in mixed control states, and nine in unified Republican states. I’m a proponent at focusing on the state level for progressive change (indeed, precinct level) in order to build from below, and this is yet another reason why we should spend more time hoping for Democratic state legislatures and governors rather than worrying about the fate of the national tea party.

Or maybe we get three million people to join the NRA and take that over from within.

Hack Pundit’s Fallacy of the Day

[ 64 ] December 11, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

Chuck Lane.

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