This is one of those recipes that reflects this blog's "waste not" mentality. I mixed up too much yeasty water for pizza dough, and decided to make a yeasty apple pie.
It starts with the sweet yeasty crust (makes two):
Ingredients:
Combine in a glass measuring cup:
1Cup warm water (~120F)
1/2 t dry yeast
1/2 t sugar
Let sit until frothy on top.
Combine in a bowl or food processor with dough setting:
3 1/3 Cup white flour
2T sugar
1t salt
3T butter, cut into small pieces
Mix until well blended
Add the yeast mixture to the flour while mixing, mix until the dough cleans the side of the bowl. Mix another 30s in processor or knead 5min. Allow to rise for about an hour in a warm, sealed and greased container, like a plastic bag or bowl covered with plastic wrap.
The Pie:
Place a pizza stone in the oven, cover with a layer of cornmeal and preheat to 375F
In a large bowl, combine:
5 Granny Smith apples, peeled cored and sliced thin
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 t cinnamon (fresh ground)
Allow to juice while rolling out the crust to a ~13in circle. Transfer to a pizza peel covered with cornmeal. Arrange the apples to cover the crust evenly, leaving a small part of the rim uncovered. While the oven is still heating, combine in a small bowl:
1/2C brown sugar
1/2C flour
pinch of nutmeg
3T butter, cut into small pieces
Mix until it resembles fine gravel, then spread over the apples. Carefully slide the pizza pie into the oven, bake for about 40min, until the topping turns golden, remove, slice and serve.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The sexiest mode of transport?
A young woman with whom I frequently discuss bike-commuting issues complained about the amount of honking she hears from drivers who, she suspected, are trying to tell her to get out of the road. I said that I hardly ever got honked-at, and we speculated about whether it's related to our routes (possible) or riding styles (which are very similar), and came to the conclusion that someone, perhaps us, ought to arrange for PSA's during Michiana Bike to Work Week encouraging better driver behavior.
This weekend I rode about 80mi (130km) to and from a small lake for a regatta. I didn't wear a shirt to avoid getting too sweaty before spending the day sailing (yes, I enjoy my low-carbon lifestyle). I was honked or shouted at by several cars full of young women, and only once by an older couple who I assume wanted me off the road.
So, why is the physically fit female cyclist in lycra shorts getting honked at? Probably the same reason the shirtless young male one did. The drivers are expressing appreciation, not anger. A couple years of using our glutes to commute has had more than just health benefits.
Thus, the correct PSA is quite possibly a picture of me from 2006, when I was an unhealthy 225lb, and today, now that I'm down to 185lb. Results fairly typical, given the metabolism boost. Perhaps not as good as $4/gallon gasoline, but if you need a reason to ride . . .
This weekend I rode about 80mi (130km) to and from a small lake for a regatta. I didn't wear a shirt to avoid getting too sweaty before spending the day sailing (yes, I enjoy my low-carbon lifestyle). I was honked or shouted at by several cars full of young women, and only once by an older couple who I assume wanted me off the road.
So, why is the physically fit female cyclist in lycra shorts getting honked at? Probably the same reason the shirtless young male one did. The drivers are expressing appreciation, not anger. A couple years of using our glutes to commute has had more than just health benefits.
Thus, the correct PSA is quite possibly a picture of me from 2006, when I was an unhealthy 225lb, and today, now that I'm down to 185lb. Results fairly typical, given the metabolism boost. Perhaps not as good as $4/gallon gasoline, but if you need a reason to ride . . .
Friday, May 22, 2009
Lighter Sweet Potato Pie
This could also be called "Crossroads and Lighthouse Pie", and was baked to celebrate the recent commencement exercises at Notre Dame. We here at Pie and Policy believe there is nothing more anti-pie than identity politics, and so we offer deep-dish support to those who seek and encourage constructive engagement.
Now, off the soap box and into the kitchen.
Ingredients:
1 whole wheat crust, rolled as thin as possible
~2 C baked sweet potato flesh, not skins
1/3 C brown sugar
1/8 T cinnamon
1/8 T nutmeg
2 whole eggs
2T butter, melted
7/8 C 2% milk -> put the butter in the cup measure and fill the rest with milk
Procedure:
(1) Get the crust into a standard 9" pie dish. Preheat the oven to 350F.
(2) Puree the sweet potato in a food processor, add the sugar and spices and blend some more, then add the eggs, butter and milk. Process until smooth.
(3) Pour the puree into the pie shell, and place the center rack for about 45min. Once the sides have start to puff a little and the center is still a bit wiggly, pull it out. Let cool for a couple hours before serving.
Now, off the soap box and into the kitchen.
Ingredients:
1 whole wheat crust, rolled as thin as possible
~2 C baked sweet potato flesh, not skins
1/3 C brown sugar
1/8 T cinnamon
1/8 T nutmeg
2 whole eggs
2T butter, melted
7/8 C 2% milk -> put the butter in the cup measure and fill the rest with milk
Procedure:
(1) Get the crust into a standard 9" pie dish. Preheat the oven to 350F.
(2) Puree the sweet potato in a food processor, add the sugar and spices and blend some more, then add the eggs, butter and milk. Process until smooth.
(3) Pour the puree into the pie shell, and place the center rack for about 45min. Once the sides have start to puff a little and the center is still a bit wiggly, pull it out. Let cool for a couple hours before serving.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Reinventing Foreign Aid, Essay #5
This is a summary and commentary on the fifth essay in Reinventing Foreign Aid
Solutions When the Solution Is the Problem: Arraying the Disarray in Development
by: Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock
The authors describe how the classic problem of development aid is "getting to Denmark", i.e. reaching the point where a developing state has the same level of public services as the European country. In this light, the Washington Consensus, a popular view among large aid providers, is that the problems of the world are "needs" like food, healthcare, security, etc. The solution is some kind of "supply", and the means of providing the supply is the "civil service". In countries with a well established Weberian bureaucracy, this model works fairly well, and was in fact established due to political pressure to break up local political machines by providing a counter-balancing influence.
In development work, there are two types of government programs where this sort of effort works: non-discretionary, transaction intensive services like drivers licenses or mail delivery, where strict rules can be set for a broad population without ill effect. The other is in discretionary, non-transacting services like central banking and trade policy. Here, "10 smart people" can meet and determine the rules that govern how certain transactions will proceed without directly guiding those transactions.
However, this model fails rather spectacularly for discretionary, transaction intensive services like teaching, medicine and infrastructure maintenance. Here, local knowledge is required, as each decision made by the teacher, doctor or road worker must be the correct one for the individual student, patient or pothole. Because these require an educated, as opposed to simply trained, class of people who can think through problems, no one set of rules can cover all decisions.
Thus, when local knowledge is difficult to acquire, the best solution for an aid program is adopt a model that, with as few transactions as possible, empowers local experts to meet the needs in their communities. If this sounds an awful lot like the ongoing debate about federal vs. state vs. local control of school curricula in the United States, that's because it is the same problem, and the solution is not in the setting of rules, but that dynamic tension.
There's a broader question here about the need for greater empathy and engagement by service providers with and in the lives of recipients. Rational solutions only apply to rational problems, and some people just love their chickens (see the link). Providing services requires a level of trust proportional to the required expertise of the service provider. In most western societies, there is a strong tradition of accountability between civilian and state, but this has taken a long time to build up, and we cannot expect it to happen overnight abroad. The variety of institutions that accomplish largely the same thing in different countries speaks to the messy series of compromises required to get to Denmark.
Solutions When the Solution Is the Problem: Arraying the Disarray in Development
by: Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock
The authors describe how the classic problem of development aid is "getting to Denmark", i.e. reaching the point where a developing state has the same level of public services as the European country. In this light, the Washington Consensus, a popular view among large aid providers, is that the problems of the world are "needs" like food, healthcare, security, etc. The solution is some kind of "supply", and the means of providing the supply is the "civil service". In countries with a well established Weberian bureaucracy, this model works fairly well, and was in fact established due to political pressure to break up local political machines by providing a counter-balancing influence.
In development work, there are two types of government programs where this sort of effort works: non-discretionary, transaction intensive services like drivers licenses or mail delivery, where strict rules can be set for a broad population without ill effect. The other is in discretionary, non-transacting services like central banking and trade policy. Here, "10 smart people" can meet and determine the rules that govern how certain transactions will proceed without directly guiding those transactions.
However, this model fails rather spectacularly for discretionary, transaction intensive services like teaching, medicine and infrastructure maintenance. Here, local knowledge is required, as each decision made by the teacher, doctor or road worker must be the correct one for the individual student, patient or pothole. Because these require an educated, as opposed to simply trained, class of people who can think through problems, no one set of rules can cover all decisions.
Thus, when local knowledge is difficult to acquire, the best solution for an aid program is adopt a model that, with as few transactions as possible, empowers local experts to meet the needs in their communities. If this sounds an awful lot like the ongoing debate about federal vs. state vs. local control of school curricula in the United States, that's because it is the same problem, and the solution is not in the setting of rules, but that dynamic tension.
There's a broader question here about the need for greater empathy and engagement by service providers with and in the lives of recipients. Rational solutions only apply to rational problems, and some people just love their chickens (see the link). Providing services requires a level of trust proportional to the required expertise of the service provider. In most western societies, there is a strong tradition of accountability between civilian and state, but this has taken a long time to build up, and we cannot expect it to happen overnight abroad. The variety of institutions that accomplish largely the same thing in different countries speaks to the messy series of compromises required to get to Denmark.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Rethinking interventions at home and abroad
The "poverty trap" figure in my post on Dr. Easterly's Introduction to Reinventing Foreign Aid was difficult to make. How does one express the goals of foreign development assistance without sounding chauvinistic? The answer: one can't. If our way of life isn't better, we have no business interfering with theirs. So why are we talking about the right way to evaluate ways to improve schools in Kenya when we don't have a good means of doing so in the US? It looks an awful lot like development aid is something we developed-country denizens can impose on others, but not ourselves.
Consider three attempts to make society better:
(1) The "war" on drugs
(2) Agricultural aid and subsidies
(3) Microcredit financing
(1) The history of the drugs trade bears a striking resemblance to the history of planned economies and foreign aid. It starts with a good idea to improve the lives of people in one country by using the power of the state (Prohibition/drug bans, socialism/Great Society). The Planners forget important details about circumstances, and maintaining the intervention becomes politically untenable in powerful nations (Prohibition is repealed/"medical marijuana", Regan and Thatcher are elected). So the Planners shift their focus abroad, where the consequences (violence and corruption, stagnation and corruption) are felt by people who are far away. Now food is being destroyed in Columbia, we're using the latest Virginia class submarines to track drug boats, and people in England are sniffing more roach poison. Oh, and the two largest threats to United States security are now paid for largely by cocaine and heroin sales. Progress!
(2) Many attempts to jump-start agricultural economies in southern Africa involve someone with an economics PhD carefully explaining that subsidies are a bad idea for farmers. Assuming efficient markets otherwise, these distort prices, create dependencies and encourage inefficient practices. Like, say, those used in the famously productive EU and US (in fact, no market is less efficient that food). Malawi bucked the trend and now grows enough to export. Meanwhile, Indian farmers who did largely embrace US farming, but not subsidizing, practices are committing suicide in large numbers as their debt burdens become unsustainable. Highly subsidized farms in the US are starting to show their own problems with sustainability as well, while urban agriculture gains popularity in both the US and Venezuela. All agriculture, like politics, is local. Planners would do well to enable more Seekers.
(3) Microcredit lending began as a sort of venture capital for the poor. When it is seen as an aid program, intended not to benefit the issuer but "the recipient's community," it becomes another hand-out because loans are issued based on need, rather than ability to repay. On the other hand, if used judiciously, the same principle of enabling (financing, training and otherwise supporting) profit-Seekers works quite well in Silicon Valley, Bangladesh and probably even New York. Yes, that link is right, a Bangladeshi bank/charity is now trying to help people, and make a few bucks, in New York City.
The upshot of all this is that any charitable activity intended to be a lifeline can quickly turn into an umbilical chord and a tether. Refugees in a not-too-bad camp, welfare recipients and trust fund kids (think Paris Hilton) have little incentive to improve their lot, but every so often an individual emerges who wants to live better. To the extent we can keep her safe, provide food during a famine and do our best to ensure good governance and opportunities around the world we're doing well. Beyond that, I don't think we should be planning her future, whether she lives in Nairobi or Nashville.
Consider three attempts to make society better:
(1) The "war" on drugs
(2) Agricultural aid and subsidies
(3) Microcredit financing
(1) The history of the drugs trade bears a striking resemblance to the history of planned economies and foreign aid. It starts with a good idea to improve the lives of people in one country by using the power of the state (Prohibition/drug bans, socialism/Great Society). The Planners forget important details about circumstances, and maintaining the intervention becomes politically untenable in powerful nations (Prohibition is repealed/"medical marijuana", Regan and Thatcher are elected). So the Planners shift their focus abroad, where the consequences (violence and corruption, stagnation and corruption) are felt by people who are far away. Now food is being destroyed in Columbia, we're using the latest Virginia class submarines to track drug boats, and people in England are sniffing more roach poison. Oh, and the two largest threats to United States security are now paid for largely by cocaine and heroin sales. Progress!
(2) Many attempts to jump-start agricultural economies in southern Africa involve someone with an economics PhD carefully explaining that subsidies are a bad idea for farmers. Assuming efficient markets otherwise, these distort prices, create dependencies and encourage inefficient practices. Like, say, those used in the famously productive EU and US (in fact, no market is less efficient that food). Malawi bucked the trend and now grows enough to export. Meanwhile, Indian farmers who did largely embrace US farming, but not subsidizing, practices are committing suicide in large numbers as their debt burdens become unsustainable. Highly subsidized farms in the US are starting to show their own problems with sustainability as well, while urban agriculture gains popularity in both the US and Venezuela. All agriculture, like politics, is local. Planners would do well to enable more Seekers.
(3) Microcredit lending began as a sort of venture capital for the poor. When it is seen as an aid program, intended not to benefit the issuer but "the recipient's community," it becomes another hand-out because loans are issued based on need, rather than ability to repay. On the other hand, if used judiciously, the same principle of enabling (financing, training and otherwise supporting) profit-Seekers works quite well in Silicon Valley, Bangladesh and probably even New York. Yes, that link is right, a Bangladeshi bank/charity is now trying to help people, and make a few bucks, in New York City.
The upshot of all this is that any charitable activity intended to be a lifeline can quickly turn into an umbilical chord and a tether. Refugees in a not-too-bad camp, welfare recipients and trust fund kids (think Paris Hilton) have little incentive to improve their lot, but every so often an individual emerges who wants to live better. To the extent we can keep her safe, provide food during a famine and do our best to ensure good governance and opportunities around the world we're doing well. Beyond that, I don't think we should be planning her future, whether she lives in Nairobi or Nashville.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Reinventing Foreign Aid Essay #4
This is the fourth summary and commentary on the essays in Reinventing Foreign Aid
It Pays to Be Ignorant: A Simple Political Economy of Rigorous Program Evaluation
By: Lant Pritchett
Dr. Prichett lays out a simple linear model that attempts to describe why so few aid programs ever receive rigorous evaluation using randomized trials. He assumes, based on a dozen years at the World Bank, that any new intervention has a set of rational supporters whose primary goal is to see their project receive as much funding as possible. As such, they must convince three groups to support the intervention: (1) core supporters, who have a low threshold for necessary efficacy because of either altruism or a personal stake (such as a production or delivery contract) in the intervention; (2) a "middle" group that reflects the general public, who are asked to give up their own wealth to pay for the intervention; and (3) hard-headed economists who have fairly high requirements for the efficacy of the programs they support and will only accept scientifically sound, randomized trials as evidence.
The "savvy activist" with enough money to start a program must decide between conducting a rigorous trial or the classic "pilot and promote" approach to convincing people to support her. The decision of which to do depends on a number of factors, most importantly the activist's best guess as to the actual effectiveness of the intervention and the general public's level of altruism. For a very effective program that yields large marginal gains for additional money, such as vaccinations or Mexico's "PROGRESA" program, it makes sense to perform a rigorous evaluation. For many aid programs the benefits are harder to see in a rigorous evaluation, and so the largest gains in support come from spending resources promoting the results of a pilot program. If one assumes a relatively low level of altruism among the general public, then almost no programs will meet its standards for efficacy as measured using rigorous evaluations. Thus, the most rational choice for nearly all aid advocates is to spend evaluation resources on advertising, since promotional activities increase both public interest in aid and that particular program.
The last third of the article is devoted to the very strange relationships that can develop between coalitions of savvy activists pushing different interventions and objectives. Tacit agreements often arise in such cases to prevent widespread publication of unfavorable rigorous test results, although the promoter of a more effective program might try to undercut others' support by leaking results. However, this "betrayal" inevitably comes back to haunt the leaker, and so a sort of code of silence develops and the message expressed is that aid is good and the world needs more of it.
This essay is my favorite so far in the book. I would absolutely love to get Dr. Pritchett and Nassim Nicolas Taleb together for pie and coffee sometime. I think Dr. Pritchett is a little too excited by the possibilities of models and graphs, but he includes a compelling narrative to explain how the aid community views evaluations. Dr. Taleb is perhaps the best living antidote to intellectual hubris, having spent much of the last few years predicting the financial crisis by pointing out the inherent flaws of trying to impose mathematical rules on things as fickle as people. Both seem to share a passion for exploring how people live in an uncertain world by embracing that uncertainty rather than trying to hide it behind equations or grand ideas. Anyone who can help me arrange such a meeting gets a slice or two, possibly even a whole pie to take home. Plus, I make coffee in a French press, and have a bean grinder that's waiting for a worthy occasion.
In a previous post, I suggested that randomized trial evaluation is a tool for agencies such as the World Bank, USAID or CARE that need to generate substantial public support, including senior bureaucrats and academics who are, presumably, hard-headed economists. To the extent these organizations need a way to determine which "Seekers" to reward, the more their internal funding allocation is governed by hard-headed economists the better. But in order to pay them, and engage in world-wide development and aid efforts, a large public outreach is required. As such, it is in the interest of program advocates to find powerful spokespeople such as Bono or Madonna.
Smaller organizations that rely on core supporters alone are much more free to implement any intervention they have developed. If that program is, say, a school for slum-dwellers from Nairobi or an NGO that delivers medical supplies directly to hospitals in war zones, then the good done is obvious to the few altruistic supporters needed. In that case, associations with other aid organizations should be approached with caution, since a larger organization has a built-in mandate to do the most good possible with its budget, rather than accomplish the goal of the smaller organization. For example, maybe the school should accept some nearby villagers instead of just kids from the slums, who tend to be drug and behavior problems, thus raising test scores and the partner's efficacy rating. Or perhaps the medical NGO could carry more than just life-saving supplies and run a vaccine dispersal while it's in country, since vaccines are good and the larger partner is under pressure to promote them everywhere.
The enemy of all Planners is accountability because few programs scale very well, while Seekers must embrace it because their smaller support base is often personally involved, if only to do things like fundraising or explaining where the organization fits in the aid/development/relief world. The World Bank seems to have employed two of its fiercest critics who have published literally volumes about the need for it to change dramatically with little practical effect. A small NGO, on the other hand, needs to keep its core supporters excited and involved with a constant sense of purpose, otherwise it has to shut down. This narrative-instead-of-quantitative accountability does not scale well, but then very few programs do, so how should one evaluate those that stay small? The next essay in the book discusses how this problem ought to be framed in development circles, where the Planned "solution" has often become the problem.
However, the need for an independent, small-scale evaluator who travels with little more than clothes, a baking mat, rolling pin and pie plate is increasingly obvious. I'd love to start or support a video blog along the lines of the Hulu show Cooking up a Story devoted to traveling to places that receive aid and seeing if it is getting easier to make pies. While a good postmodernist might reject "scientific" evaluation and master narratives, pastries transcend such philosophical issues and get to the heart of whether the program is doing good. At the very least, a poorly performing program would have a hard time explaining why I should should stop making pies (or maybe waffles).
It Pays to Be Ignorant: A Simple Political Economy of Rigorous Program Evaluation
By: Lant Pritchett
Dr. Prichett lays out a simple linear model that attempts to describe why so few aid programs ever receive rigorous evaluation using randomized trials. He assumes, based on a dozen years at the World Bank, that any new intervention has a set of rational supporters whose primary goal is to see their project receive as much funding as possible. As such, they must convince three groups to support the intervention: (1) core supporters, who have a low threshold for necessary efficacy because of either altruism or a personal stake (such as a production or delivery contract) in the intervention; (2) a "middle" group that reflects the general public, who are asked to give up their own wealth to pay for the intervention; and (3) hard-headed economists who have fairly high requirements for the efficacy of the programs they support and will only accept scientifically sound, randomized trials as evidence.
The "savvy activist" with enough money to start a program must decide between conducting a rigorous trial or the classic "pilot and promote" approach to convincing people to support her. The decision of which to do depends on a number of factors, most importantly the activist's best guess as to the actual effectiveness of the intervention and the general public's level of altruism. For a very effective program that yields large marginal gains for additional money, such as vaccinations or Mexico's "PROGRESA" program, it makes sense to perform a rigorous evaluation. For many aid programs the benefits are harder to see in a rigorous evaluation, and so the largest gains in support come from spending resources promoting the results of a pilot program. If one assumes a relatively low level of altruism among the general public, then almost no programs will meet its standards for efficacy as measured using rigorous evaluations. Thus, the most rational choice for nearly all aid advocates is to spend evaluation resources on advertising, since promotional activities increase both public interest in aid and that particular program.
The last third of the article is devoted to the very strange relationships that can develop between coalitions of savvy activists pushing different interventions and objectives. Tacit agreements often arise in such cases to prevent widespread publication of unfavorable rigorous test results, although the promoter of a more effective program might try to undercut others' support by leaking results. However, this "betrayal" inevitably comes back to haunt the leaker, and so a sort of code of silence develops and the message expressed is that aid is good and the world needs more of it.
This essay is my favorite so far in the book. I would absolutely love to get Dr. Pritchett and Nassim Nicolas Taleb together for pie and coffee sometime. I think Dr. Pritchett is a little too excited by the possibilities of models and graphs, but he includes a compelling narrative to explain how the aid community views evaluations. Dr. Taleb is perhaps the best living antidote to intellectual hubris, having spent much of the last few years predicting the financial crisis by pointing out the inherent flaws of trying to impose mathematical rules on things as fickle as people. Both seem to share a passion for exploring how people live in an uncertain world by embracing that uncertainty rather than trying to hide it behind equations or grand ideas. Anyone who can help me arrange such a meeting gets a slice or two, possibly even a whole pie to take home. Plus, I make coffee in a French press, and have a bean grinder that's waiting for a worthy occasion.
In a previous post, I suggested that randomized trial evaluation is a tool for agencies such as the World Bank, USAID or CARE that need to generate substantial public support, including senior bureaucrats and academics who are, presumably, hard-headed economists. To the extent these organizations need a way to determine which "Seekers" to reward, the more their internal funding allocation is governed by hard-headed economists the better. But in order to pay them, and engage in world-wide development and aid efforts, a large public outreach is required. As such, it is in the interest of program advocates to find powerful spokespeople such as Bono or Madonna.
Smaller organizations that rely on core supporters alone are much more free to implement any intervention they have developed. If that program is, say, a school for slum-dwellers from Nairobi or an NGO that delivers medical supplies directly to hospitals in war zones, then the good done is obvious to the few altruistic supporters needed. In that case, associations with other aid organizations should be approached with caution, since a larger organization has a built-in mandate to do the most good possible with its budget, rather than accomplish the goal of the smaller organization. For example, maybe the school should accept some nearby villagers instead of just kids from the slums, who tend to be drug and behavior problems, thus raising test scores and the partner's efficacy rating. Or perhaps the medical NGO could carry more than just life-saving supplies and run a vaccine dispersal while it's in country, since vaccines are good and the larger partner is under pressure to promote them everywhere.
The enemy of all Planners is accountability because few programs scale very well, while Seekers must embrace it because their smaller support base is often personally involved, if only to do things like fundraising or explaining where the organization fits in the aid/development/relief world. The World Bank seems to have employed two of its fiercest critics who have published literally volumes about the need for it to change dramatically with little practical effect. A small NGO, on the other hand, needs to keep its core supporters excited and involved with a constant sense of purpose, otherwise it has to shut down. This narrative-instead-of-quantitative accountability does not scale well, but then very few programs do, so how should one evaluate those that stay small? The next essay in the book discusses how this problem ought to be framed in development circles, where the Planned "solution" has often become the problem.
However, the need for an independent, small-scale evaluator who travels with little more than clothes, a baking mat, rolling pin and pie plate is increasingly obvious. I'd love to start or support a video blog along the lines of the Hulu show Cooking up a Story devoted to traveling to places that receive aid and seeing if it is getting easier to make pies. While a good postmodernist might reject "scientific" evaluation and master narratives, pastries transcend such philosophical issues and get to the heart of whether the program is doing good. At the very least, a poorly performing program would have a hard time explaining why I should should stop making pies (or maybe waffles).
Monday, May 4, 2009
An effective opposition forming?
The GOP would appear to be re-energizing itself: as seen by MSNBC, or GOPUSA.
In our kitchen, we firmly believe that a good opposition is the key to good governance. Towards that end, here's a juicy target for a party that wants to pretend it favors small government: redundant organizations, such as ARPA-E. Don't get me wrong. I love, and engage in, government basic research, but DoE's got several national labs, an SBIR group, and a good relationship with the NSF. Want innovative energy research, check out the National Renewable Energy Lab.
Actually, there's quite a bit of room to play with this kind of concept, and play off the President's speech at George Mason University:
Only Government can come up with a program to remove old, polluting cars that actually pollutes more than leaving them on the street!
Only Government can promote a "green" fuel source that causes massive starvation, hurts US and international security and has higher carbon emissions than gasoline. (Iowa's heading away from the GOP anyway.)
Go a step further on the "personal responsibility" angle for energy and environmental issues. Accept that most of us see "drill here, drill now" as a big government solution because the land is all owned by the government, there are pretty stringent laws limiting liability of drillers, and energy extraction is practically synonymous with corruption and degradation outside of places that make money from it. Encourage your younger candidates in the Northeast to be seen commuting on bicycles once in a while, show off "griesel" campaign vehicles in California, and turn down the heat a little at the office. Maybe even encourage private investment in space-based solar power. You can "out-green" the Democrats without subsidies, and convince skeptical voters that your party offers more than pretending it's still 1950 until the oceans rise, crops fail and we can't afford the Navy that ensures steady delivery of hydrocarbons anymore. With the Dems saving the Big Three and getting a populist home mortgage modification program rolled out, they're getting most of the suburbs that don't mind Adam and Steve (Iowa and Maine, for instance). Don't let them have everyone who is skeptical of bureaucrats addressing the massive challenges we face, but wants to support people who have the will try to solve them.
In our kitchen, we firmly believe that a good opposition is the key to good governance. Towards that end, here's a juicy target for a party that wants to pretend it favors small government: redundant organizations, such as ARPA-E. Don't get me wrong. I love, and engage in, government basic research, but DoE's got several national labs, an SBIR group, and a good relationship with the NSF. Want innovative energy research, check out the National Renewable Energy Lab.
Actually, there's quite a bit of room to play with this kind of concept, and play off the President's speech at George Mason University:
Only Government can come up with a program to remove old, polluting cars that actually pollutes more than leaving them on the street!
Only Government can promote a "green" fuel source that causes massive starvation, hurts US and international security and has higher carbon emissions than gasoline. (Iowa's heading away from the GOP anyway.)
Go a step further on the "personal responsibility" angle for energy and environmental issues. Accept that most of us see "drill here, drill now" as a big government solution because the land is all owned by the government, there are pretty stringent laws limiting liability of drillers, and energy extraction is practically synonymous with corruption and degradation outside of places that make money from it. Encourage your younger candidates in the Northeast to be seen commuting on bicycles once in a while, show off "griesel" campaign vehicles in California, and turn down the heat a little at the office. Maybe even encourage private investment in space-based solar power. You can "out-green" the Democrats without subsidies, and convince skeptical voters that your party offers more than pretending it's still 1950 until the oceans rise, crops fail and we can't afford the Navy that ensures steady delivery of hydrocarbons anymore. With the Dems saving the Big Three and getting a populist home mortgage modification program rolled out, they're getting most of the suburbs that don't mind Adam and Steve (Iowa and Maine, for instance). Don't let them have everyone who is skeptical of bureaucrats addressing the massive challenges we face, but wants to support people who have the will try to solve them.
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