A memory: Murray Weidenbaum

In grad schooI, I worked for Murray Weidenbaum, at the Wash U CSAB, as a research assistant.  He gave me a hard assignment, on the costs of trade barriers. 

I did the research, and wrote a draft. It took about a month. 

 

It came back completely covered with changes, amendments, cross-throughs, and requirements for more research. There may have been three or four sentences, total, in ten pages, that were unchanged. (This was 1982, in the days of pen and paper revisions).

 

I was disappointed it was so marked up, and I guess it showed in my face. 

Murray saw that, and laughed. "Look, Mike. This is fine. If it had been bad, I would've made some vague suggestions and told you it was good. That would have been the end of it. And the end of YOU, frankly. I'm don't have time to train RAs."

"Instead, this is a workable draft. Remember: busy people only spend time on good first drafts. You did a competent job, so I spent time on it. Now go finish it." 

He added me as a coauthor (second author, but still). And taught me that no first draft is any good. The GOAL is to have a first draft worth marking up so much that it looks like red spaghetti. That's actually what success looks like!

 

 

 

 

 

Monday's Child is Full of Links!

1,  Interview on CNN with the EYM. 

2.  Anatomy of a smear campaign. Not sure it was a "campaign," but it is an example of how information cascades plague social media. 

3.  An idiosyncratic, but interesting, history of fantasy football. 

4.  Why do basketball players make more than teachers?

5.  Plato v. Mises? (Mises wins...) 

6. James Buchanan's normative vision. 

7.  Econtalk: On the Future of Higher Education.

8.  IHS: Is capitalism sustainable?

9.  The "Munger's Guide to Academic Publishing."

10. The "Answers" ad from my 2008 Governor campaign.

Frederick Douglass and the 4th of July

As promised, "something about the warts" of the USA on the 4th of July. In 1852 Frederick Douglass (one of my favorite libertarian heroes!) gave a speech. Below is a version of that speech, read by some of FD's descendants today.

 The great thing about Douglass is that he believed in America, at least in its potential. He believed in ideas, and thought that the values in Declaration of Independence meant just what they said. But he was disappointed, over and over. Even after slavery was ended, Jim Crow and other government policies betrayed Douglass's hopes. The end of slavery did NOT install blacks as full citizens; that took more than another full century.

And if you consider access to government programs, fair treatment in the courts and by the police, and place in society, not even then. That legacy of disparate treatment has prevented access to education and buying a home, the two things that have lifted so many other  citizens out of poverty and sent us (including me) up the stairway to the American dream.

The question is whether we all take the words of the Declaration, signed today nearly 250 years ago, mean anything. I hope they do. I think this is worth listening to. It's less than 8 minutes.

"What To The Slave Is The 4th of July?"

• The text of the speech, and some background on Douglass.
• A great book, by Tim Sandefur. 
• A reading by James Earl Jones. 

That State Ain't Gone Crazy. That State Gone STATE.

An essay in which I try to adapt the Chris Rock insight about the nature of things, or, if you will, "The Thing Itself."

AIER LINK.

And link to the Chris Rock bit, if you haven't seen it.

Unicorn: Sighted!

The video YOUR GOVERNMENT does not want you to see!

Because the truth is out there, people. And it has a horn in the middle of its forehead.

(From the most excellent Duke Political 2020 Graduation "Marking the Moment" video by Shaun King and Georg Vanberg)

Monday's Child

Monday's Child is Full of Links

1.  A piece on the future of universities. The point being that professors and their self-important classes are missing the point.

2.  So. I know what to do about the meat industry losing workers. Let the workers "price gouge," and charge much higher wages.  Because high prices are better than empty shelves.

3.  Bikeshedding.

4. "Alex, I'll take 'No, it isn't' for $500, please."

5. The end....of the beginning.

6. A video about a unicorn sighting in the wild.

7. How can he possibly think this makes him look good? I mean, forget the merits. Why SAY it?

8.  Parasites that turn their "hosts" into zombie slaves.

9.  Matt Ridley on "Innovation." Interestingly, Ridley is pretty concerned about the covid19 thing.

10. That ol' ceteris. She ain't paribus. At least in international comparisons. I'm not usually a stickler on the causal inference thing, but cross-sectional comparisons are worse than useless, without a lot of other conditions being met.

11. Makes you wonder. I hope the guy wears pants, at least. Even if that covers up his "image of God."

12. Lessons in diplomacy from General Mattis.

Hot Sauce

There is no reason to buy hot sauce. The hot sauce you can make is easy, stupid cheap, and way better.

Step 1: What kind of chili do you want to work with? There are many. But preparation may matter more than type; in a way, it's like tea. Varieties of tea are different, but the way the tea is manipulated is the source of the most interesting flavors.  Mexico is to jalapenos as China is to tea: millenia of messing around with different preparations. And, I don't actually think that there is any serious debate: there is ONE PARTICULAR PREP that stands apart.

The kind of chili you want to work with is the MORITA. You're welcome, I saved you all that time. Moritas are a subtype of chipotle, but if you ask for chipotle powder you will NOT get Morita.  You want the whole Moritas, with stems on. They are smoked red-ripe jalapenos, and they retain a little softness and fruitiness.

Step 2:  Ingredients:
2 cups of chopped morita
1 apple, cored and chopped but peel on
3/4 cup red wine vinegar
3/4 cup water
Tablespoon of salt.
Honey or sugar to taste

Step 3:  Create
Heat a cast iron skillet, and put the whole dried moritas in the skillet. They will smoke a little, and swell up. Shake them around (no oil or water, just dry!). Remove them and put them on a cutting board. As soon as they are cool enough, remove the stems and the hard part where the stem connects, roughly chop the chiles. (I leave the seeds. But up to you. Seeds are hot, without much fruity or smoky flavor. But they do add some texture)

Put in a steep sided microwave safe bowl. Add the vinegar, water, salt, and apple, and stir around until everything is at least moistened. Cover with plastic wrap, and microwave for 3 minutes on high.

Remove from microwave and let sit for 10 minutes.  Then do that again, 3 minutes on high, let sit for 10 minutes. (The apple should be somewhat soft by now).

Use an immersion blender or food processor to reduce everything to a thick paste.

Add 1 tablespoon of sugar or honey, blend it in, and give a taste. Add more sweet or salt as suits you. And add more water if it is too thick.

Cover tightly and let sit in refrigerator for at least two days.

Stir up the mixture if it has settled. Go!

It works spooned on tacos, or in burritos. But it is also a great side sauce on eggs, or any kind of meat. And one of the best uses is as a marinade/cooking sauce on grilled chicken or grilled steak. It's thick enough that it will stick when you cook, and help create some great bark on the chicken skin. You immediately get a smoked flavor as if...well, you know. As if it the meat had been smoked.

A note of warning: this sauce is hot. It is not ketchup. The heat is a subtle, smoky, fruity hot, but it's still hot. Be cool with it. (I usually freeze about 2/3 of this batch, in two containers, so that I can thaw them and use them later).

Mungowit's End

I created a YouTube channel, with short videos based on some of my essays on economics.

Fun to make, and I'm learning a lot about videos, to help me teach students how to do "video papers," a much more useful application of their time than writing academic papers.

So far:

Everybody Loves Mikey

I'll Stick with These

They Clapped

The Mancgere

More every week, on Friday mornings!