In which I agree with Ann Althouse

... re: values.

On "how to build a dog"

Interesting reflections on how my Willow came to be.

Oh, clementine

And giant boxes of said fruit are filling up the markets this time of year! Here's how I got through my box.

1. I think I've blogged this clementine cake before, but it is worth noting again just how marvelous it is. Note that because of the almond flour, it's gluten-free; good if you are entertaining people who adhere to this particular popular diet.

2. This clementine vanilla quick bread is yummy and easy enough, but the process of scraping out the vanilla bean freaked Willow out. Yes, that's right; our golden retriever erupted in one of her once-monthly fits of barking. "Don't worry, Willow," I had to explain. "See, vanilla beans cost $10.99 for two at Whole Foods, which alas means we don't have them all that frequently. Markets can be more effective at deterring certain kinds of conduct than using force via barking." I'm not sure she quite got the love-the-price-system sermon, but she's learning.

3. Chicken paillards with clementine salsa were also yummy and fresh-tasting. Only con is the giant amount of salsa. It probably serves more like six people rather than four. Also, ambivalent reaction of golden retriever to pounding chicken breasts thin with sherry bottle was noted.

4. Halibut with clementine gremolata was okay, although I wouldn't serve it with spinach again. The bitter with the sweet didn't quite work. 

On gay equality and capitalism

Andrew Sullivan is famous (infamous?) for moving all over the map politically; when I first started reading his blog, he was a Burkean conservative. Then he became a passionate defender of Obama whose Burkeanism became increasingly more theoretical and abstract and whose positions on contemporary meat-and-potatoes issues appeared fairly mainstream Democratic. Recently, he endorsed Ron Paul, and the compass needle seems to have hit "libertarian." In this vein, he's put up two good posts on how the private sector appears more receptive to the movement for gay equality, and why this means that advocates for this cause should focus on changing civil society rather than enacting more laws. For all of his bumping around the political compass, good for Sullivan for realizing this important point. 

Interesting paper on racial and other admissions preferences at Duke

I'm not sure if anyone actually reads or appreciates my occasional posts on this topic, but in case people do, this is an interesting  new empirical paper on preferences at Duke. Alex Tabarrok also has a nice summary of it up at Marginal Revolution. For earlier coverage of the science and engineering issue, see here.

Why didn't I think of doing this?

" In civil marriage, prenuptial agreements are permitted, so the man hardly shares all his worldly goods, and plenty of people marry with reservations, and without violating the law when they do so. People write their own vows too. Sometimes they say them in Vulcan! "


-- Conor Friedersdorf,  commenting on Rick Santorum's opposition to gay marriage. It's a good piece, although not one that has much that's unfamiliar to libertarians or liberals who have tried to make the case for gay marriage to social conservatives. 

Petite blondes of the world unite

Stranger outside of Whole Foods, to Pnin and Willow: She's such a nice dog. Calm, sweet, obedient. I was thinking of getting a golden retriever, but they're too big. I want a dog like her, though -- like a golden retriever, but smaller.

Pnin: Actually, she is a golden retriever.

Stranger: Oh.

Pnin: She's a puppy, so she's still growing. And she's maybe a little small for her age. There are some females who are 60 pounds at six months. Willow was only in the high 30s or low 40s. So maybe she'll be only 55 or 60 pounds when she's full grown.

It's all too common for people to get my beloved's breed wrong. It's not too weird that people sometimes mistake her for a Labrador. Little goldens don't have the big fluffy coat that bigger ones do, and they do look more like Labs. But when Willow was a lot littler, someone asked me if she was a cocker spaniel. Lest I worry about her being small for her age too much, though, I've also been asked if she was part Great Dane. Uh, no. As a small human myself, though, I guess the two of us will just have to stick together.