Seattle Food Quick Hits

Several nice meals in Seattle.  A quick review of four of them.  This is pretty long, so I'll continue below the fold.  In the meantime, here is the YYM at Safeco.  Mariners have overcome their sadness at losing Ichiro by playing their best ball of the year.  Pretty fun, beautiful place.

Food reviews below...

Suppose 2001 Were a "Summer Blockbuster"

If 2001 were advertised now, as a "summer blockbuster," would you go see it?


Funny part is the comments.  They don't seem to get the fact that this is a MOCKERY of current ads, not a celebration of them.

With a nod to my guy John O.

Expressions entirely relevant for these trying times

"The trend is your friend till the bend at the end" (hat tip to Noah S.)

 "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end"

 "Bulls make money, bears make money, hogs get slaughtered"

 "Both teams played hard my man" (Rasheeeeeeeeed!!)

 Give me more in the comments!!

le deluge

Wow.  This totally sucks.  Really, really sucks.

Three sigmas.  We don't like three sigmas.

I killed the party again

Here's a tremendous video for one of my favorite Jens Lekman songs, "Black Cab". Jen's is on tour this fall; I'll catch him either in DC or Dallas!

Wow!! Doug Hibbs basically calls the election for Mittens!

Here is the money quote:

"according  to  the  Bread  and  Peace  model  per  capita  real   income  growth  rates  must  average out  at  nearly  6  percent  after  2012:q2  for  Obama  to  have  a   decent  chance  of  re-­‐election."

You can get to the whole paper from here (and obviously a hat tip goes to Brendan).

Beyond this bombshell, the paper is well worth reading as Hibbs excoriates his competitors for using ad-hoc and ex-post dummy variables as well as endogenous approval ratings as explanatory variables in their vote-share equations.

The Koreas at the Olympics

In response to my Grantland Olympic piece with LeBron, a few people have asked why we didn't specifically discuss  the Koreas. Maybe I'm missing the question, but the basic economic model seems to explain them very well.

From the 2000 games to date (including what has happened in London), North Korea has won 20 total Summer Olympic medals, while South Korea has pocketed 101.

South Korea has almost twice the population of the North (48.5 million to 22.6 million) and a per-capita income that is more than 15 times greater ($31,700 to $1,800).

Of North Koreas 20 medals, 15 have come in weightlifting and judo. These are examples of the "easy-pickings" sports we discussed in the piece. South Korea is also strong in tae-kwon-do and archery.

Olympic fever

If you like NBC's tape-delayed coverage, you'll love this.

Here's me and LeBron's Olympics "preview" piece for Grantland.com.

Private education for the poor?

Mrs. Angus and I greatly enjoyed "The Beautiful Tree" by James Tooley and have become very interested in the potential making private education available for the poor especially in areas where the public school system has failed them.

So I was happy to see that the Oxfam Blog "From Poverty to Power", was hosting a debate on the merits of private schooling for the poor.

Arguing in favor is Justin Sandefur from the Center for Global Development.

Arguing against is Kevin Watkins from Brookings.

Public education is a real problem in many parts of many poor countries. While enrollment rates are rising, as called for by the Millennium Development Goals, achievement (i.e. actual learning) is often quite poor. Even Watkins concedes this point.

your aging rap star round up

1. Dr. Dre is in dutch with Jacque Rogge and the IOC for giving away free headphones to Olympic athletes without giving the IOC a taste.

2. Snoop Dogg is banned from Norway for two years! For possession of weed! Really! Unlike his ban from the UK, which he fought and got reversed, He will not be filing an appeal, "his lawyer said. "[Snoop] can live with the decision."" Actually Snoop got hassled in Norway last year for bringing in "too much money". I don't get it, if he can't bring money to buy weed and he can't bring weed, what the hell is he supposed to do?

3. Gore Vidal is dead.