Wine, Physics, and Song

Today’s press release from CDMS, who maintain a stack of germanium and silicon detectors in a mine in Minnesota in hopes of detecting Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) that are candidates for dark matter.  2 events passed their cuts, 0.8 expected; they estimated an ex ante chance of 1 in 4 chance of getting 2 events.  So, not strong evidence for WIMPs, but not strong evidence against them either.  More and better detectors are being installed.

Unsubstantiated rumors from anonymous sources department: “Jester”, who claims to be a particle physicist formerly working at CERN and now in New Jersey, blogs that there may be indirect evidence that CDMS’ announcement this coming Friday may contain evidence for dark matter having been detected in a mine in Minnesota.  But the real news is the purported email from a senior editor at Nature, in which a rumor that Nature was about to publish a paper from CDMS on this is shot down as containing “as much truth as the average Fox News story”.  Of course Fox intermingles truth, falsehood, and opinion, so maybe he’s leaving them some wiggle room…those Nature editors can be wily!

Caveat link-follower:

Resonaances is a particle theory blog from New Jersey. Here you find latest news and comments on developments in particle physics, spiced up with my legendary sense of humour. As my name tells, my primary objective is to make laugh. If you get more out of this blog, that’s entirely on your own responsibility.

I was pointed to it by a particle physicist at PI, though.

This piece by Brad DeLong is essential reading on the current economic situation.  Paragraphs 8-10 are the key ones.

I don’t necessarily agree, however, that until the Fed and the Congressional centrists thrash out an understanding of whether we’re in a liquidity trap or not, there’s no point in a jobs summit.  Anything that keeps it in people’s consciousness that something needs to be done about unemployment, is probably good.  Perhaps the administration and Congress will decide to do something more.  “More stimulus” talk seems to be in the air, despite widespread claims that it won’t fly.  Sometimes things sneak back onto the agenda.

One of the many great things about Perimeter Institute is the tradition of wine and cheese Fridays at 4 PM.  Dan Lynch, who manages PI’s Black Hole Bistro, always lays in a good supply of some good-old-standby reds and whites, a small assortment of other interesting bottles, excellent cheese and hors d’oeuvres.  And there are  the friendly PI scientists, staff, and guests to talk to.  Yesterday I had a half-glass of 2007 Flat Rock  Cellars Red Twisted, an Ontario wine from the Niagara peninsula.  The only red grape the winery names on their website is Pinot Noir, and that’s what this tasted like.  Although the website calls it a blend, perhaps that means a blend of barrels of Pinot that didn’t make it into the higher-end Gravity Pinot and Reserve Pinot.  It was a nicely balanced, rather French-style, easy to like PN, not too light in body nor tart and green as young Pinot sometimes is, but rather fruity in a low-key, black-cherry and raspberry sort of way, kept in line by restrained use of oak, and with some hints of minerality characteristic of where it comes from.   Before springing $20.15 for it, Flat Rock’s list price, I’d want to taste another glass or two… but next time I’m in the area I’ll certainly stop by to do just that, and check out their other wines:  various higher-end Pinots, Chardonnays, and Riesling.  A 2008 (?) Nautilus Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc (from New Zealand) was also really nice—with the characteristic gooseberryishness and hints of grassiness of Marlborough SB, but in a restrained, balanced way that I really liked.  (Marlborough Sauvignons can be a bit over the top at times).  Crisp, but not ostentatiously so. Yum.  The good-old-standby on the red side was the Pilitteri 2007 Merlot.  I like this wine fine, it’s moderately rich, but a bit rougher and less balanced than I’d prefer, and with some hints of foxiness to the black-cherry fruit.  I’d choose instead another of their wines that PI has in its cellar—the 2002 Reserve Merlot, which Dan chose to serve at a conference banquet I attended last month.  This was excellent stuff, a bit lighter bodied than the 07 regular bottling, but with a suave, even velvety mouthfeel despite a bit of tannin, classic blackberry flavors with a hint of minerality, and a nice bouquet mingling plum and cassis-ish notes with hints of tarriness, spiciness, oak and maybe a hint of coffee.  It’s still availabe at Pilliteri for $30.  (I was there last weekend.)  Although it’s not a tannin monster, I’d make sure it has time to air and develop over the course of a meal, in the glass or in a decanter, and if you have a cellar, I think it might continue to mellow and perhaps develop further over another 5 or more years.

Via Kyle Deas’ Fitful Murmurs, a link to an article in the Financial Times reporting on a study of celebrity “naked chef” Jamie Oliver’s “Feed Me Better” pilot program of serving fresh-cooked, nutritious lunches in British schools.  (The FT article reports that it involved a special “boot camp” training session for the dinner ladies.)  I think I first heard about this program, and perhaps the research study, from my wife.  There’s a strong suggestion that it yields a few percentage points improvement in the number of students reaching particular levels in Science and English testing, and a more detailed examination of the regressions in the original article looks broadly consistent with that (even the “non-statistically significant” coefficients, including ones in Maths, were almost all in the right direction and mostly of about the same magnitude).  The study compared the two-academic-year periods of 2002-2004, to 2005-2007, in five school districts (”local educational areas”, LEAs) in the southeast of London—Greenwich, in which Oliver’s fresh-cooked meal program was implemented beginning in the 2004-2005 school year, with four others in which it wasn’t.  The change in absenteeism in Greenwich, relative to the change in other districts, was estimated to be  -1.2 percentage points, with a standard deviation of estimate of 0.365%, significant at p<0.01.  This is a pretty significant drop–not a 1.2 percent drop in amount of absenteeism, but a change of 1.2 percentage points in the absenteeism rate—translating to about a 22.5% drop in the number of absentee students.   (In the text, the authors cite only the 0.8 percent drop in authorized absences, since the change in unauthorized ones wasn’t significant on its own; but their data shows the total change as significant too, which is what I described.) Even more interestingly,  the estimated change, relative to non-treated schools, in the fractions of students reaching Levels 4 and 5 on the “Key Stage 2″ standardized testing, broken down into English, Maths, and Science (for four coefficients) ranged from 2-6%, with standard deviations of these estimates around 2.5-3%, in a “school level data” regression analysis.  (This means other factors that might have affected results were included in the analysis by including variables for school characteristics in the regression.)  Only a couple of these six coefficients were significant (at the 0.10 level), but I think the overall pattern for the fractions of students attaining Level 4 and Level 5, with those coefficients that were not significant at 0.10 still large and in the right direction and roughly comparable to the standard deviation of estimate, adds persuasiveness to the results.  Level 3 fraction was also included, but the effects were negligible compared to the standard deviation of estimates.   (I haven’t looked at the methodology carefully enough to determine whether Level 3 meant “exactly level 3″ or “at least level 3… in the former case, the rough constancy at level 3 is perhaps good news as it would suggest students who scored at level 4 or higher rather than level 3, were at least roughly counterbalanced by ones who reached 3 rather than a lower level.)  Pupil-level regressions were also done, with the pupil’s percentile score as dependent variable, and pupil-level data to help control for socioeconomic status and other confounding variables; it gave broadly similar results:  the relative effect on English results was large at 4.7 percent, and highly significant at p<0.01, while the Science doesn’t look too bad either at 3.6 percent (apparently not significant even at 0.1 though) and even the maths is in the right direction.

I would have liked to see more explicit statements on the school and pupil-level characteristics included in the regressions, but I take the school-level characteristics to have been those summarized in Table 2.  Actually, if we interpret “controls include” to mean that this is the full list of controls, then the information is in the note at the bottom of Table 3.

I’m not a practicing statistician or econometrician, so I won’t pretend to give a definitive assessment of the methodology here (I also haven’t spent that long thinking about it), but it all looks pretty decent.  I’d love to hear comments here on the methodology from competent working statisticians or econometricians.

They did a control for the idea that the change in educational outcomes was due to the change in absenteeism, and concluded it wasn’t, and a similar, but I think much more tenuous, attempt to somehow proxy for a “placebo effect”, which they interpret as suggesting the placebo effect wasn’t the thing.  I’m not so sure it matters, if it continues to work.

Nice stuff; let’s hope for expanded programs and more studies of them.  Meanwhile I think it’ll influence me to eat a little healthier myself.

It’s hard to beat the value and quality you get by buying the wines of a European wine-producing country in that country…especially if the country is Spain, France, or Italy.  High quality wines from smaller producers who have no need to spend time marketing their wine for export—and splitting the profits with exporters—are available, and since wine is considered a basic foodstuff, usually taxed far less than if they are exported to the US.  And most wines are the better for not having taken a boat trip across the Atlantic, or even (if you are on the West coast of North America) through the Panama Canal.

This summer I was in Spain at the biennial Quantum Information workshop in Benasque, and had the chance to try some excellent wines, and excellent values for an American even with weak dollar.  Raimat’s Viña 32 Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, DO Costers del Segre, from the inland Catalan area of Lleida (aka Lérida, in Castilian Spanish) was “excellent, with red fruits, mildly grainy tannins, fruity, slightly foxy.”  It was in the 5-6 Euro range.  This was a solid value, but a better wine was Bodegas Pirineos Merlot-Cabernet 2003 Crianza–Somontano, €8.50 at El Veedor de Viandas in Benasque.  This is from the foothills of the Pirineos near Benasque, and was a very nicely balanced, medium-bodied, easy-to-drink but not too simple wine, with a “combination of red fruits and herbs of the Pyrenees (fantasy?)”.  It lacked the “foxiness” mentioned in the Raimat, and the herbal notes leaned toward rosemary, savory, thyme, while otherwise the wine displayed typical cabernet and merlot tastes with a bit of backbone from tannin.

There are plenty of excellent cheeses to be had in Spain—just try out promising-looking ones, especially ones from local producers, in your local cheese store or supermarket cheese section and you’ll likely do fine.  One of the several that we tried with these wines was a particular standout.  Quesos de Radiguero’s Rio Vero Leche de Cabra, Moho Azul.   This is from Adahuesca in the region of Huesca, a valley or two over from Benasque but futher down, in the mid-altitude foothills of the Pyrenees.  “Moho azul” means “blue mold”, not “blue mojo”, but mold and mojo are exactly what this cheese has:  it’s covered by a finely filamented, live-looking blue-black mold, glistening with drops of moisture.  Inside it’s white to lightly straw-colored, parts smoothly creamy but parts with a slight texture like fine ricotta, balanced between runny and firm, with strong, clear, fermented or still-fermenting flavors, perhaps somewhat reminiscent of a creamy Saint Andre but more pungent, almost with hints of Roquefort.  Serious stuff, and seriously fun to scare the squeamish with.   The previous time I was in Benasque, four or so years ago, Robin Blume-Kohout told me that he considers himself a fan of strong, and blue, cheeses, but that the cheese I served at a party that summer was the first cheese he’d encountered that might possibly count as a little too strong, or too blue, for him.  Memory tells me that this cheese, which might have been Cabrales, was wrapped in leaves, something you only find in Spain anymore as it is apparently not legal for the commercial product anymore (EU regulations, no doubt).  Sergio Boixo had some other stuff to tell me about Cabrales production, but  I suspect he was pulling a prank on a credulous foreigner, so I won’t repeat it here.

A few talks you might consider watching online:

Today (now yesterday, actually)’s colloquium.  Patrick Brady gives a nice accessible introduction to gravity waves and the current LIGO observation program, as well as what we may see when Advanced LIGO comes on line in a few years.  Some enlightening animations.  Recommended for: General Audiences. Mild equations.

Very cool ideas, very well presented, from Stephen Bartlett yesterday in the PIQuDos (Perimeter Institute Quantum Discussions series) on how the ability to do quantum computational gates—in this case, single qubit gates—in a measurement-based quantum computational model using the ground state of a lattice Hamiltonian as a resource—can in some cases be modeled by an order parameter, the expectation value of a “string” of operators on adjacent lattice sites that are related to the measurements you need to do to effect the gate.  Phases—regions of parameter space in the parametrized family of Hamiltonians—exist for which the order parameter indicates these gates work well for measurement-based QC purposes.  In particular, the qubit has to be “moved” through the lattice as a “circuit” is simulated, and in a “good” phase, the fidelity of the state of the moved qubit to the state before it’s moved, is independent of how far it has to be moved.   An excellent talk.  Recommended for: quantum computation wonks, condensed matter physicists, and a general physics audience interested in getting an idea of the cutting edge of interaction between quantum information/computation and condensed matter physics.  If you’re looking for interesting but possibly hard open problems, this talk certainly suggests some.

Had a glass of “2008 Bastianich Sauvignon Blanc” at Bayona in New Orleans. I’m assuming it’s the one listed on the net as from the  DOC “Colli Orientali del Friuli” (at Bayona they listed it as from “Venezia”, but since the Colli Orientali del Friuli are in the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, that’s probably the one).  Fantastic! Hints of grassiness (in a good way), minerality, raciness. Balanced, not high-alcohol, with a long finish. This wine is the essence of Sauvignon Blanc—no histrionics, no in-your-face flavors of gooseberry or whatever, just delicious, sappy, wine you want more of, with or without food. Hats off to everyone involved with this, from vineyard managers to winemakers to distributors and retailers: we need more wine like this!

Here’s Bastianich’s blog.

Herbsaint is an excellent restaurant on St. Charles street in the central business district of New Orleans.  I have good memories of eating there a few years ago, and I had dinner there twice this week.  It has a bit more casual and hipper vibe than some of the top foodie meccas here, with white mosaic tile floor with black accents in the bar that looks like it might be original from the 20’s, cracks and all, large storefront plate-glass windows, a thick semigloss paint job on the walls and woodwork, off-white with the faintest avocado tinge, some dropped down lighting boxes hung from the ceiling, white tablecloths and comfortable oak chairs with a 20’s/30’s feel as well.  The place was packed on a Monday night—good sign.  I went with three friends.  We ate in the back room, not quite as nice an atmosphere as the main room, but fine.  My duck gumbo was intensely flavorful and hearty.  Olive oil seared Louisiana shrimp with tomato confit and breaded fried eggplant were delectable.  These were the best shrimp I’ve had on this trip to New Orleans—flavorful, extremely fresh, touched but not overwhelmed with some spices reminiscent of the New Orleans “barbecue” shrimp (but basically a grilled or sauted preparation, not swimming in the mildly spicy “barbecue” sauce).  The tomato confit was too sharply vinegary for my taste; the eggplant was quite good, though.  We drank a bottle of wine from Chateau de la Liquiere, at Faugeres in the Languedoc, recommended by the waiter over my initial choice of the Chave “Mon Coeur” Cotes du Rhone.  It was a good solid wine, reasonably tannic but not overbearing or rough, and fairly smooth—well flavored, with some golden leafy notes (reminded me of a California oak forest for some reason), but not complex.  My dinner companions raved over it more than I did—perhaps a bit of a sniffle was preventing me from fully appreciating it, or it maybe it was the $55 price tag.  It complemented the food well.  For dessert, I took one of the waiter’s top recomendations—the warm banana tart.  It was advice well taken—high-end and homey at the same time, with a delicious, well browned, thick crumbly tart crust, firmish, delicious filling somewhere between pecan pie filling and banana-flavored marzipan, and delectable seared glazed banana slices and mint leaves on top.  This and the shrimp were seriously delicious culinary achivements, the sort of stuff Michelin stars and such are made of.

Too tired to walk far from my hotel, the next night I went back thinking I’d have a small dinner.  I ended up getting the special Italian tasting menu (one each week, for the month of October), for $45.  This one started with a small antipasto of thinly sliced, excellent hard (but not tough!) salame, and some marinated diced eggplant (nice but not as good as the salame).  The Crab Gnudi were superb, gnocchi-like balls of crabmeat held together with ricotta and grilled or seared, served on swirls of delicious, intensely flavored olive oil (and some other delicious sauce that was a pale orange (something citrusy, perhaps?)).    The dish was less delicately flavored than I expected, but superb.  Herbsaint seems to have a style of “high-end heartiness”—perhaps it’s a Cajun-food influence: they tend toward big flavors, smokiness, searing along with a little innovation and fusion.  The main course certainly followed that model: baked striped bass with tomatoes, fennel, and basil was served in the paella pan it was baked in, and featured a chunk of firm, flavorful, skin-on bass in a smoky, thick tomato sauce in which big slices of fennel had braised to tenderness.  It was a lot for one person to eat, and if it had a flaw it might have been a bit of excessive smokiness, but was an extremely tasty take on what might be a pan-Mediterranean tradition of cooking fish over wood fires at sea’s edge—it called up stories of pine-smoke-scented bouillabaisses on the Riviera, and images of the Ligurian coast.  The server mentioned “a white cake” when I ordered the menu—the menu said Cassata Siciliana, usually a cake of ricotta and candied fruit flavored with liqueur—but it was indeed a square of white cake—high end Sara Lee, basically, with a bit of a caramel syrup and some tasty toasted hazelnuts on the cake.  The cake was velvety and fresh but not too special.  The chocolate salame, however, was excellent.

A Baumard “Cuvee Ancien” (a botrytized sweet wine, presumably a Chenin Blanc from the Loire, as Baumard also produce a Cote du Layon) was a good accompaniment to (and more interesting than) the cake, mellow and sweet but not cloying, and with nice flavor notes of dried orange peel, hints of brown sugar, and botrytis, though not a complex standout.  The main course went perfectly with a very good Commanderie de Peyrassol Rose 2007  from the mountains of Provence, though I suspect my other potential choice, a Barbera from an excellent producer, would also have gone well with it.  The Chateau d’Epire 2006 Savennieres, a firm, slightly steely and minerally Chenin Blanc based wine from the Loire, with a hint of honey and a balanced, smoothness, went perfectly with the crab (though it should have been served a touch colder).

For someone dining alone, the tables in the front window by the bar are a bonus—good seats from which to watch everyone having fun at the bar and in the restaurant, as well as a pleasant view of the outside seating and St. Charles street.

Overall, a very reliable, enjoyable place, well-appreciated by lots of locals, and with a very long and well chosen wine list, much more interesting wines by the glass than many places have, and a menu that is likely to deliver, if not guaranteed constant perfection, hearty, interesting, imaginative food and at least several dishes on each visit that will put you “in the zone.”

To enjoy it

You have to let it fade.

Ukiyo-e