I really need to incorporate the phrase "caucus virgin" into my everyday vocabulary.

So I am back to D.C. and environs after a nice Massachusetts trip, and little Willow appears to be recovering from her misadventures in sock theft. Perhaps a full post and pictures will follow, but I fear overwhelming you all with too much cuteness. Also, while I am sure that everyone has figured out by now that I am a  totally unserious person, I might as well at least try to maintain some pretense of non-frivolousness by writing about subjects other than my darling golden retriever.


As some of you may have noticed, there was an Iowa caucus last night. And Rick Santorum narrowly lost to Mitt Romney, generating plenty of buzz. Like many other libertarians, I am no Santorum fan, for reasons ably laid out by David Boaz in a recent Cato at Liberty post and Jonathan Rauch in a 2006 essay for Reason. Reading most of his conservative defenders has been depressing; Jennifer Rubin's stating that the blemishes on Santorum's record as a fiscal conservative are merely a  vote for No Child Left Behind and some earmarks rather glosses past the long list of non-fiscally conservative statements he made in his book and elsewhere as documented by Boaz and Rauch. David Brooks's column praising Santorum had its share of equally cringeworthy moments, though I suppose Brooks's big government conservative streak is well-documented enough that nobody should be surprised. But memo concerning the last line; as a UChicago grad, when you  write that "The country doesn't want an election that is Harvard Law vs. Harvard Law," the point you ought to be making is that Harvardians are unserious jocks, not that they are scary intellectual elitists, which was presumably what you meant based on context. 


 I suppose I can take some comfort in knowing that his particular brand of populist big government conservatism is unlikely to play as well outside of Iowa than it did within it and that his popularity is likely to fade once some of his more extreme remarks come under closer public scrutiny. Also, while I have decidedly mixed feelings about Ron Paul, it's nice to see that at least some polling data indicate that it is the small government elements of his message, and not the creepy paleo-libertarian ones, that resonate most with Iowa's younger voters. (I am also indebted to said blog for coming up with the charming "caucus virgin" locution that appears in the post title). Thus, onto N.H. as it is!

Ailing Willow

Alas, poor Willow. She'd made a safe trip with my husband up to see his family in Massachusetts for a few days. I'd come back to D.C. to hopefully get some work done (and avoid burning up scarce vacation days in anticipation of a trip to ancestral homelands of Ukraine and Russia this summer) and then join the Pnins over the weekend. She did well on her first day, even getting along better than expected with the Pnin family cocker spaniel (see above.) I was even hoping that she'd connect with some of the local academics regarding her recent paper, "Coase on Toast?: An Empirical Investigation into Asymmetric Bargaining at the Breakfast Table," possibly putting herself on tenure track in the econ department at MIT. But this has not transpired so far. She swallowed a sock around 11:30 this morning and had to be whisked off to the local animal hospital. The vet was able to get her to throw up Sock #1, but discovered a Sock #2 lurking in her gut. Now she has to stay overnight in the hopes that she'll pass Sock #2. If she doesn't, surgery awaits. Theists, please summon up thy superpowers on Miss Willow's behalf. Meanwhile, I'll just stare at the floor and remind myself over and over to try to be confident in modern medicine.

UPDATE: Young Willow has passed Sock #2 and returned home without needing surgery. She has more or less gotten back to her frisky and energetic ways. But all socks will now be under lock and key -- perhaps even the lockbox that Al Gore mentioned in his 2000 presidential campaign, as Pnin puts it...

Shinto Willow

Each December, any blended family must inevitably confront the question, "In what religious tradition will we raise our golden retriever?" So first, we exposed Willow to her Jewish side by letting her watch us light the tiny $10 menorah from Target. She seemed intrigued enough that she avoided jumping up on the kitchen table to like it. This was followed by the eating of the Hanukkah gelt, which we'd actually purchased for the presidential candidate themed holiday party to serve as the Ron Paul appetizer (y'know, because of his love of the gold standard.) Associating paleo-ish Ron Paul with Jewish tradition perhaps felt not quite right, but Willow seemed more miffed that we couldn't share any of our chocolate with her.

Then she traveled north to visit her Archer grand-owners for a celebration of Christmas. This was all somehow so exciting -- tree! pine needles from tree to put into her mouth! terrifying plastic Santa Clau on neighbors' lawn to bark at! stacks of presents around it which can double as a homemade golden retriever agility course! -- that she managed to inflict diarrhea on herself. But she does approve of the numerous special dog cookies that she received from friends and relatives and the new Kong Wobble that she got as a present. If she were, like the heroine of a popular young adult novel, forced to try to pick one religion for herself, I don't know which one she would settle on.

Fortunately, however, Willow is nothing if not an outside-the-box thinker. (Though she hastens to add that she does sometimes like to stick her head into empty J. Crew boxes and sniff around in them. In fact, if you have some, feel free to send them her way.) And so she has apparently settled on... Shinto ancestor worship... which slights neither of us! Yes, she has discovered a pillow on my parents' couch with a picture of one of her distant ancestors, Am. Can. Bda. Ch. Cummings' Gold-Rush Charlie. She is quite content to stare at it for hours on end while she's relaxing on the sofa. And thus our clever girl splits the difference between her two divergent religious backgrounds and offends neither of her humans!

My Christmas gift to you is a link to the Wikipedia entry for "revealed preference."

Increasingly, I'm convinced that news articles recommending giving gifts that the recipient doesn't actually want are not actually about providing recommendations that are supposed to be useful, but instead a literary device that enables the author to mount her soapbox on behalf of a familiar cause without her plea sounding tired and shopworn. Ignoring the gimmick aspect of the genre would be akin to my husband's refusing pick up Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation because he is Jewish and it is rude to read letters addressed to other people. Or encouraging my sort-of boss to stop writing "Questions for the President" blog posts because the President never seems to answer his questions,  without realizing that the "question" device is a clever way of framing his commentary on Obama's policies.


Take, for example, the most extreme and outrageous entrant into the genre that I have yet discovered -- ""As a Christmas Gift, Tell Your Friends and Relatives That They Are Overweight." No sane person can possibly think that this is intended to be real gift-giving advice. Please, please, as my husband points out in a somewhat different context, while we can perhaps easily judge the health risks associated with a friend's being overweight, it's much harder for us to figure out how much pleasure the other person gets from indulging in her bad habits. This would counsel for leaving our friends to their own devices and not sticking our nose into others' private business. Fortunately, most of us do this already.

That said, the genre's feeling pretty tired to me already. I'm starting to prefer my "here's why you should support my pet cause" sermons straight up, rather than watered down with "here's how this is relevant to the Christmas season" gambit. I'm in luck then that it's December 23. But I hope that this particular form of gimmickry gets retired next year, seeing how not-fresh and not-original it feels. 

Notes on fashion

How to explain the periodic appearance of long-sleeved sheer T-shirts in the world? Yes, they look fine when one buys a "layering piece" to put underneath it, e.g. a basic white tank top. But basic white tank tops are also useful when paired with articles of clothing other than the aforementioned sheer T-shirt. So, inevitably, there will be days when one is tempted to wear the sheer T-shirt by its lonesome but realizes that there are no suitable clean layering pieces in the drawer. Long-sleeved T-shirts of fabric of normal thickness notably don't have this drawback. Given that, why does anyone persist in buying the sheer kind? It's doubly annoying to number among the unsuspecting who think "Ah ha! Cute shirt on sale!" and then realize, no, that its sheerness makes it vastly limited for wear and un-buyable.  Gah.

Also: how am I to understand the tall boots worn over jeans or leggings trend? It seems aesthetically appealing enough. It conjures up nice images of people in equestrian dress. I can support that. But where should I be looking for boots that are suitable for this purpose? The good ones all run expensive, and I don't want to sink a lot of money into some I'm unlikely to wear regularly. And I fear cheap ones would just be uncomfortable in all the wrong ways. 

Yes and no to Alex Tabarrok's Atlantic essay on immigration

Alex Tabarrok has an interesting short essay up at The Atlantic in which he argues for increasing the number of high-skilled immigrants who get to stay. He calls it the "no brainer" of the year. He puts it the following way:

Behind Door #1 are people of extraordinary ability: scientists, artists, educators, business people and athletes. Behind Door #2 stand a random assortment of people. Which door should the United States open?

In 2010, the United States more often chose Door #2, setting aside about 40,000 visas for people of extraordinary ability and 55,000 for people randomly chosen by lottery.

To which I say: yes and no. Yes to increasing legal immigration for high-skilled immigrants, for all of the reasons that Tabarrok sets forth in the piece. But I'm less confident that the dichotomy set up in the first paragraph is the best way to frame the issue generally. It's not obvious to me that the national economy's best served by creating an immigration policy that focuses on getting the most intellectually talented people possible, for the reasons that Tabarrok's GMU colleague and fellow econ blogger sketches out rather colorfully in in part of a blog post that is on the whole about quite a different topic:

Suppose we have an isolated society in which everyone is a genius. Let's call them the Brains. Who takes out the garbage? A Brain, obviously. Who does the farming? Again, Brains.

Now what happens if the geniuses come into contact with a society where everyone is of average intelligence at best? Let's call them the Brawns. If the Brains allow the Brawns to join their society, the average genetic quality of the Brains' society plummets. But everyone is better off as a result! Now the Brains can specialize in jobs that require high intelligence, and the Brawns can take over the menial labor. Total production goes up.

This is an example of what economists call the Law of Comparative Advantage. Trade between two people or groups increases total production even if one person or group is worse at everything. Suppose, for example, that Brains can make 5 Computer Programs or 10 Bushels of Wheat per day, and Brawns can make .1 Computer Programs or 5 Bushels of Wheat per day.

Computer Programs Bushets of Wheat
Brains 5 10
Brawns .1 5
Brains and Brawns can still trade to mutual benefit: Just have one Brain switch from farming to programming (+5 Programs, -10 Bushels of Wheat), and three Brawns switch from programming to farming (-.3 Programs, +15 Bushels of Wheat), and total production rises by 4.7 Programs and 5 Bushels of Wheat.

So I'm not convinced that the United States wouldn't be made better off by letting in additional people who are more like Bryan's imaginary Brawns than his imaginary Brains. Nor am I sure that any government central planner could come up with the right formula to figure out the optimal number of Brains and Brawns to whom to grant visas. It's probably much better to just let as many Brainws and Brawns who think that they can find work to come (so long as neither Brawns nor Brains are terrorists, spies, or have other such problematic skeletons in their closets that would make them obviously poor candidates for eventual citizenship.)

Perhaps Tabarrok thinks that increasing the number of high-skilled immigrants is a more politically feasible reform to current immigration policy than one that would increase legal immigration more generally. If so, fine. But his first two paragraph are still a less than helpful way of framing the issue.

Test

I had a misadventure last night whereby a spammer got into the Gmail account I have under my maiden name (i.e. the non-pseudonym equvialent of isabel.archer@gmail, rather than the non-pseudonym equivalent of isabel.pnin@gmail, which is what I've been using for the better part of the last year anyway). It seemed that the spammer had also deleted To My Parents, Ayn Rand, and God (or perhaps Google did based on the spammer's Terms of Service violation.) But, miraculously, my three years' worth of rambling about baking, meritocracy, and libertarianism seems to live: o, atheist libertarian holiday miracle! Assuming this test works, expect more substantive blogging to resume shortly.