Market Power

Buttermilk Fried Chicken

Ingredients

1. 1 whole chicken, cut-up
2. 2 c buttermilk
3. 1/4 t freshly ground pepper
4. 1/2 t salt
5. Crushed Kellog's Corn Flakes
6. Lawry's seasoning salt
7. Peanut oil

I mixed the buttermilk with the pepper and the salt and then marinaded the chicken in the mixture for about 1.5 hours. 

I then seasoned each piece with a little Lawry's and then coated each piece with corn flake crumbs.  I set the breaded pieces on wax paper and let sit for 1/2 hour. 

I deep-fried the pieces in 300 degree peanut oil for 10 minutes.  Eldest, the PowerWife, and the PowerMom approved.  Youngest, crabby from a nap, did not eat his dinner.

Dry Rye Roggenbier (Rye Ale)

This brew is straight from a kit bought from Midwest Brewing Supplies in St. Louis Park, Mn.  The last batch - the first kit I had used in a long time - turned out so well that I decided to work with another kit.  I also decided to use Culligan water bought at the local HyVee.  Good beer is the product of three things:  good ingredients, good water (also an ingredient, but singled out here), and clean equipment.

Ingredients:

1. 6# wheat malt extract
2. 12 oz rye malt
3. 4 oz. wheat malt
4. 6 oz caramel malt (40L)
5. 4 oz. flaked rye
6. 1/2 oz. German Tradition alpha = 5.7% (used in place of the usual Hallertau hops)
7. 1 oz. Tettnang hops alpha = 4.3%
8. 1 t Irish moss
9. White Labs American Hefeweizen yeast (WLP 320)
10. 3/4 c corn sugar (priming)

I heated 2 gallons of water to 159F and added specialty grains and flaked rye to a fine mesh bag and steeped them for 30 minutes.  I find that setting the burner on my smooth-top range (which I am growing to like) at 3 lets me keep the "mash" at the desired temperature.

During this time, I heated 2 gallons of sparge water in a separate pot to 170 degrees.  The burner I used is a dual burner and after heating the water to 170, I turned the burner to 2 to hold the water at the desired temperature.  This did the job.

After mashing the specialty grains, I emptied the contents of the mesh bag into a stainless steel collander and slowly sparged the grains using a 1-cup glass measuring cup.  It took about 10 - 15 minutes.  I then added the malt extract (after heating the container to about 140 degrees to help the syrup come out) and heated the wort to a rolling boil.

I added 1/2 oz. "German Tradition" plug hops (used in place of the usual Hallertau hops which are apparently a casualty of the hops "shortage") to a fine mesh bag, added sanitized glass marbles to help it sink to the bottom of the pot, and added to the wort.  I boiled the wort for 30 minutes.

I added the Tettnang hops to the mesh bag and boiled for another 15 minutes.

I then added the Irish moss to the wort and boiled for another 15".  At this time I placed my wort chiller in the boiling wort to sanitize it.  Total boiling time is 60 minutes.

At the end of the boil, I ran cold tap water through the wort chiller to bring my wort to approximately 75 degrees F.  I added enough Culligan water to make 5 gallons.

Once again I forgot to take a hydrometer reading.  Other than that the process went fine, no troubles at all.

Total brewing time today:  3.5 hours from start to finish, including clean-up.

Update:  4/06/08  I racked the brew to the secondary today.  Sp Gr was 1.011 (pretty typical for this stage) and the beer that I used to measure Sp Gr tasted good.

Baby Got Stats

Baby got stats via Freakonomics blog.

I'm Still Around and What I've Been Doing

It's been a pretty busy week semester.  I've been working on a dataset for a paper I'm writing this semester and that's taken a lot of creative time.  That and I've been putting my sports economics notes into PowerPoint.  I figure that if PowerPoint presentations in the classroom are going to be effective, they need to mimic the dynamism of the chalkboard.  On a chalkboard, words are written one by one.  Graphs are drawn bit by bit.  When I draw graphs that describe some comparative statics, it's important to use different colors so that students can follow what I'm trying to get across. 

In PowerPoint, that means animating the text and the graphics.  But animating entire graphs can be a very time-consuming process.  I have to think about how I would draw the graph on a blackboard, line by line and notation by notation.  So it takes awhile to get it right.  The opportunity cost has been writing on the blog. 

I still have quite a ways to go before the dataset will be ready - hopefully I'll have it done before finals.  But my sports econ notes are almost completely finished. My students have tests coming up soon and I will have to work on my sports econ test bank I've been working on as well this semester.  Lastly, my advisees have registration coming up soon, which means more foot traffic at my office.  Hopefully I will be able to post more substantive stuff rather than the "looky looky what I found" posts I've had recently.

Shout Out to the Cloud

A proud moment in St. Cloud State University Economics history happened recently:

The announcement of Jim Bullard to lead the St. Louis Federal Reserve is a happy point for us at SCSU. He was a double major in economics and in quantitative methods and information systems from us in 1984. I remember him coming during his grad school years to SCSU to give a paper to our department -- he graduated just before I came to St. Cloud -- and I thought his research then was already outstanding. His resume is one piece of evidence I am a decent judge of talent.

Congratulations from your sister department in Mankato!

Tigers Sweep Bears, Oh My!

If you want to see some impressive pitching stats from this weekend, check my latest at ZooRahBlog.

Drag Race: Car vs. Jet... It's Closer than You Think

Video here.  HT Instapundit.

Latest at the ZooRahBlog

My latest is up at the ZooRahBlog.  Also, can't the KC Star give the Tigers a little diamond love?

Community Service Awards and How to Transform the World

I got this email through the campus system recently:

It's time to nominate a student with a major in our College or a student club associated with our College for a SBS Community Service Award.  ....<snip>   Part of the mission of our College is to promote the "transformation of the social world." We have many students who are actively engaged in service to our communities.  Please consider nominating a student who embodies this spirit of service.

I post this not to dissuade anyone from nominating a student nor to single out my university.  Nor do I intend to diminish the value of this award that any recipient might feel.  I want to make a couple of points about the "transformation of the social world." 

My college's promotion of "transformation of the social world" seems pretty pervasive in the academy today.  It seems to so simple at first.  But it isn't.  Consider three points:

1. Saying "transformation of the social world" implies moving to some ideal.  Whose ideal "social world" are we supposed to pay attention to?  Surely it's not the social world of the Huns or of Dark-Ages Vikings.  Should I use the ideal social world of your average Georgia Baptist, of Hugo Chavez, of the average North American, David Mamet (old or new?), or some other ideal?
2. I see a lot of students and former students working around town.  Many have, in the process of their jobs, served me very well and have thus provided me with value.  Since I am a part of the social world, they have, by definition, changed the "social world."  If I choose to nominate someone who has provided me with exemplary service in the performance of their jobs, do they get considered?
3. As an economist, I must account for the opportunity cost of someone's actions.  If someone provides, say, $x dollars of value to the non-profit sector but could have provided $y > $x dollars in value to the for-profit world, does that person transform the social world for the better?

Dennis Moore might have said "this transformation of the social world is trickier than I thought."

More Trash Talk for the Heap

John Whitehead writes:

Phil: you could have been Tim's 50th participant. He is royally bummed out that he has fallen short on yet another one of his goals:

Hey John Whitehead

I tried to join your NCAA group via Environmental Economics, but I lollygagged and didn't get it done in time.  Too bad, cuz I would have been the winner!

Au contraire, mon ami, au contraire.

My experience leads me to the conclusion that sports economists really don't know all that much about sports. In the same way as environmental economists really don't know all that much about the environment. And labor economists don't work very hard. And macroeconomists ... [awkward pause] ... and macroeconomists don't know all that much about the macroeconomy.

Nein, nein mein Freund.  I know quite a bit about sports.  It's the economics that I have trouble with :-)

Phil: you could have been Tim's 50th participant. He is royally bummed out that he has fallen short on yet another one of his goals:

Hey John Whitehead

I tried to join your NCAA group via Environmental Economics, but I lollygagged and didn't get it done in time.  Too bad, cuz I would have been the winner!

Au contraire, mon ami, au contraire.