Cards welcome

So I am looming on the verge of old age. Perhaps oddly, having read John Derbyshire's infamous musings on women ceasing to be attractive at the age of 20 and the PUA guys' oeuvre makes these last few days of my 20s seem less worth clinging to. Somewhere, there will be always be haters, as the kids say. Yet if I ever did wish to succumb to age-based self-loathing, I guess I can be drawn back from the brink based based on misadventures in being carded, which still occur frequently despite the whole tottering on the brink of third decade of life thing. Yes, I'm used to occasionally awkwardly rooting around in my purse before entering crowded bars in Adams-Morgan or having to produce ID on demand when buying wine at grocery stores. The Wegmans near my parents in Pennsylvania did once card 67-year-old Papa Archer, whom no reasonable person would mistake for a 20-year-old. But on the other hand, there are the places that don't routinely card that nonetheless ask me to fork over ID. Are there really lots of underage types ordering sangria at Jaleo,or Pinot Grigio with their organic pizza at Coppi's? Did they really need to ask me for ID?

But the upside of old age is that it presents a wonderful opportunity to throw a combined birthday/holiday party for oneself. This year, Pnin and I had a 2011-year-in-review theme, with dishes paying tribute to each of the major presidential candidates. More pictures and recipes will follow, but in the meantime, here is a recipe for Hermain Cain 9-9-9 cookies, courtesy of Cooks Illustrated:



INGREDIENTS

Butter Cookie Dough

2 1/2cups unbleached all-purpose flour (12 1/2 ounces)
3/4cup superfine sugar (5 1/2 ounces) (see note)
1/4teaspoon table salt
16tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks), cut into sixteen 1/2-inch pieces, at cool room temperature (about 65 degrees)
2teaspoons vanilla extract
2tablespoons cream cheese , at room temperature

Glaze

1tablespoon cream cheese , at room temperature
3tablespoons milk
1 1/2cups confectioners' sugar (6 ounces)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. FOR THE COOKIES: In bowl of standing mixer fitted with flat beater, mix flour, sugar, and salt on low speed until combined, about 5 seconds. With mixer running on low, add butter 1 piece at a time; continue to mix until mixture looks crumbly and slightly wet, about 1 minute longer. Add vanilla and cream cheese and mix on low until dough just begins to form large clumps, about 30 seconds.

2. Remove bowl from mixer; knead dough by hand in bowl for 2 to 3 turns to form large cohesive mass. Turn out dough onto countertop; divide in half, pat into two 4-inch disks, wrap each in plastic, and refrigerate until they begin to firm up, 20 to 30 minutes. (Can be refrigerated up to 3 days or frozen up to 2 weeks; defrost in refrigerator before using.)

3. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out 1 dough disk to even 1/8-inch thickness between 2 large sheets parchment paper; slide rolled dough on parchment onto baking sheet and chill until firm, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, repeat with second disk.

4. Working with first portion of rolled dough, cut into desired shapes using cookie cutter(s) and place shapes on parchment-lined baking sheet, spacing them about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until light golden brown, about 10 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking time. Repeat with second portion of rolled dough. (Dough scraps can be patted together, chilled, and re-rolled once.) Cool cookies on wire rack to room temperature.

5. FOR THE GLAZE: Whisk cream cheese and 2 tablespoons milk in medium bowl until combined and no lumps remain. Whisk in confectioners' sugar until smooth, adding remaining milk as needed until glaze is thin enough to spread easily. Drizzle or spread scant teaspoon glaze with back of spoon onto each cooled cookie, as desired.

Eating and drinking in and about Washington, D.C.

1. No link because I don't think they have an actual website, but the empanadas* cart at the Downtown Holiday Fair thing at 9th and G is very meh. They're not awful, per se, but they're not good either. The dough is like weirdly too thick or something. Although I am admittedly spoiled by visits to Chile and Argentina, the empanadas I made based on a Cooks Illustrated recipe were better, and that without masa harina. So, hrumph.

2. On a better note: although apparently this was already amply written about elsewhere, Meatballs is actually pretty good. Or, at least, the polenta is nice and creamy, and the meatballs with marinara sauce are warm and lovely and filling on a cold day. It is apparently supposed to be a sort of Italian-influenced version of Chipotle, and both share the vice of serving only giant portions that are hopelessly more than a 5'0 woman should ever try to consume in one sitting. Also, don't naively ask for a bottle of water without thinking about it. That is, they offer only expensive Italian bottled water that can only be opened with a bottle opener. Luckily, there is a bottle opener in my office's kitchen, but I found it only after some annoying rummaging.

3. There is a newish libertarian non-profit in town called Keep Food Legal that had a fun fundraiser on Saturday night. The El Chilango tacos served are yummy; recommended.

4. This is an interesting and thoughtful post about culture, and I agree with the general point about the subtle ways in which cultures work. But I'm a little bit surprised by the meal example. That is, I think I've routinely observed plenty of upper-middle-class types eagerly downing everything on their plates at dinner. My biggest eater friend is a lawyer's son grown up to be a Jesuit priest. He's been running marathons regularly since he and I first met in college, and he apparently needs the thousands of extra calories to keep himself powered up. I've noticed other people who love upper-middle-class-ish sports eat with the same voracity, although perhaps not quite on the same scale.

There's also the phenomenon of the "Om om om, must devour as much free food at cocktail reception as possible!" instinct, which I confess I haven't fully grown out of myself. But in my view, that's an age and lifestyle thing -- a relic of being a young person from a relatively comfortable background growing up and with plenty of cultural capital, but temporarily in a stage of their lives where cash for groceries and dining out is relatively tight. Many of my friends who went through a similar law/grad student/intern stage of life seem to have the same instinct.

So, blog friends, is there a class signal here that I should be noticing? If I'm trying to impress bigwigs, should I be making a point of politely and delicately not finishing dinners?


* No tilde because I can't figure out how to do this on this computer; sorry, hispanophone friends!

amen, brother

Clearly the point of the infamous Romney bet was that this wasn't supposed to be a trivial amount of money; c.f. the kids on the playground at the nearby elementary school who like to say things like "I'll bet you a million dollars that...." None of them have one million dollars; many of their parents probably don't even have a million dollars. (It's Arlington, so the number of their parents that do is probably non-trivial.) Still, the point is that they are so sure they're right that they're happy to frame the bet as one that cannot possibly be lost. Robin Hanson, however, harrumphs further (and convincingly) about what is really going on here:

The idea that a president candidate couldn't afford a $10,000 bet is crazy, as is the idea that ordinary folks don’t know this fact. They pay for TV commercials, which cost lots more than $10,000. They fly all around the nation in planes, which gets expensive.

So clearly we have moved high up into belief meta-levels here. “Yes, most people know Romney can afford $10,000, but some aren’t sure that most others know this, and so this shows that Romney doesn’t know about such folks.” Or “It is rude to point out that you are rich, even when everyone knows you are rich. Yes wearing nice suits shows he’s rich, but not wearing suits is socially unacceptable. Offering smaller bets is acceptable, however, so offering a big bet could be interpreted as bragging about wealth. Not that I’d interpret it that way, but someone might, and this shows Romney doesn’t realize that.”

Geez it must be a pain to be a presidential candidate. This all shows how much we care about social savvy and signaling in such folks. We don’t much care if they understand supply and demand, but they damn well better know who might try hard to be offended by what.

Yep, that's pretty much it.

Septime Webre production of The Nutcracker

So I admit that there is part of me that shuddered when, after a Gilt City offer for cheap Nutcracker tickets landed in my inbox, I read that said production was very American. I am more than happy to claim the mantle of "libertarian, not conservative" when it comes to regulation of sex and speech. But when it comes to grammar and art, suddenly I start waxing traditionalist. There isn't really a right-wing tribe for aesthetes who happen to be hard-core free marketers, but if there were, I might prefer to fly their banner in lieu of "libertarian."

Anywho. All this is long prelude to way of saying that, despite the annoying advertisements about re-interpretation, the Septime Webre production of The Nutcracker is actually pretty likeable. First of all, at least the production has the good graces to stay in the right century; the children's costumes at the initial Christmas party scene are suitably Victorian. Mercifully, most of the rest of the Americanizing touches -- such as the rats cast as American soldiers rising up against King George, or the cherry blossoms scene -- manage not to feel too contrived.

Pnin said to me afterwards that it felt less lavish than a version of the Nutcracker that he'd seen growing up. And, indeed, this is a ballet that's meant to be produced on a grand scale; trying to stage it on a shoestring feels deeply wrong. Perhaps it's because I'm used to much cheaper theater, but I didn't notice it. Ultimately, recommended.

"The real reason not to sleep with your professor"

History professor Hugo Schwyzer offers up one at Jezebel:

I don't have a problem with students asking out their former instructor, provided the grades have been turned in. But I try to warn them that the reality of an actual relationship is likely to be disappointing. Students fall in love with a fantasy; the professor who seems so cool and commanding in the lecture hall is rarely so charismatic over dinner — or as mind-blowing in bed as one might have fantasized. I've seen a number of student-teacher relationships unfold in which a woman ends up dumping her former instructor in near-disgust; the gap between what she thought he was and what he turned out to be was too much to bear. That can be shattering and disillusioning for everyone involved.

Two decades in the classroom have taught me that when it comes to students and teachers, we don't get crushes on people whom we want sexually as often as we get crushes on people whom we want to be like. Yes, some crushes are purely physical. But more are what I'd call aspirational: the objects of the crush represent something students want for themselves. College is an uncertain time; good teachers tend to embody passion and certainty, two things students desperately want. And when they're crushing on a prof, young people are usually confusing the messenger with the message. As I learned the hard way many years ago, rather than encourage the crush to feed our egos, our job as professors is to turn that intensity back on to our students, encouraging them to use their newfound enthusiasm and let it take them to all sorts of wonderful places. Places other, of course, than their professors' bedrooms.

This is all absolutely true, but the principle extends beyond the classroom, no? That is, I am hard-pressed to think of infatuations that I've felt that weren't aspirational, that weren't deeply about something other than the crush that I wanted for myself. And if one were to follow Schwyzer's advice literally, then one would probably wind up never dating anyone at all. I suppose that nuns have long life expectancies and all, but for the rest of us, it's often worth it to assume the risk. I suppose professors and students might be a special category where this sort of problem is particularly likely to be acute, but that's somewhat different from saying that actually dating all aspirational crushes should be avoided, which seems to be what Schwyzer's saying here.

From the archives

Back when I was still blogging at LiveJournal, I put up two posts offering cautious praise for Newt Gingrich, based on a long talk I heard him give at AEI in 2006. Looking back at the two posts, they are somewhat more cautiously laudatory than I remembered (or perhaps more cautiously laudatory than some things I might have said then in casual conversation with my then-boyfriend or other friends.) This is good, because otherwise, I might have to pen some sort of "Things I Used To Think That Turned Out To Be Wrong" after reading various critiques of Gingrich's rise in the 2012 Republican nomination polls that I have found persuasive. Of course, I could perhaps devote an entire blog devoted to apologizing for things about which I was wrong in 2006, but somehow I doubt that that would make for especially interesting reading. All to the better that I get to skip the self-abnegation routine...

Back to Newt. At a basically personal level, for the reasons that I spelled out in those old posts, I kind of like the guy. He passes the proverbial "Would you want to grab a drink with him?" test that pundits are so fond of mulling over. Peggy Noonan, I think, sees the same strengths that I saw back then. But she's also right to flag the same very real weaknesses that David Bernstein and George Will did in the critiques of Newt's rise linked above. So given all that, I can't really cheer on the recent Gingrich boomlet. There's part of me that's guardedly hoping that Jon Huntsman gets his turn soon at being Anti-Romney of the Month, for most of the same reasons that my husband spells out here. Nonetheless, emphasis on the "guardedly."

Examples of really splendid use of parentheses

"Does this mean that there is nothing that the state can do to help the poor? Two answers are possible. One (which is actually more attractive than is commonly supposed) is no."

-- Richard Epstein on forced pro bono.