On the recommendation of the guys at Cherries and Clay, who've made it one of their New Years resolutions to stage a Battle Royale between Rieslings from BC's Tantalus and Ontario's Cave Springs plus a few others, I tried the Cave Springs 2008 Riesling, VQA Beamsville Bench, from the Niagara peninsula.  Very, very, tasty.  Quite crisp, tannic, flavorful, with plenty of appley fruit and minerality, especially a certain slightly spicy dirt kind of thing that I associate with Niagara, and also noticed in the Clos Jordanne Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays (both wineries are located in Jordan, and Beamsville Bench is in the area), along with some chalkiness.  11.5% alchohol.  This struck me as a rather Alsatian Riesling.  Some sweetness, but basically dry and quite snappy and high in acid compared to, say, my memory of California Rieslings (from the 1980s though).  Though not cheap for a North American Riesling, this gets the thumbs-up for multiple-bottle buys.  Very distinctive, loads of Niagara Peninsula escarpment terroir, and just plain tasty.  Should probably age fine for a few years, maybe longer, but it's definitely delicious now.  Make yourself a choucroute garni, if you're up for it.  (I had it with broiled salmon, which was fine, but not really an outstanding wine-food pairing.)  Thanks for the recommendation, Kurtis and Jake at C&C.   (They also link to some videos about Cave Springs, here.)

Via Brad Delong, an interesting article (that is, however, likely to be somewhat obscure to a general audience) to consider when reading, say, Paul Krugman on  the Chinese renminbi / US dollar exchange rate.  (Note that in this article, Krugman doesn't actually say the Chinese currency is undervalued; he just says they'd be doing us a favor by appreciating it relative to the dollar (which they would do by lending us less money, notably by buying fewer US treasury bills and such)).  Helmut Reisen thinks the exchange rate is not as undervalued as some claim based on purchasing power parity; low-income countries tend to have a lower exchange rate due to the fact that nontraded goods in such countries are cheap, relative to traded ones whose prices are equalised internationally through trade, and even more, relative to similar nontraded goods in high-income countries.  Based on a linear regression, he estimates the RMB is only 12% undervalued.  The scatter plot of deviation of exchange rate from purchasing power parity versus log GDP per capita doesn't look linear to me (it looks convex downward), and if the apparent nonlinearity reflects some some relevant functional form in the dependence of one on the other, it might suggest the Chinese currency is even less undervalued.  Of course, comparison with such a cross-country regression shouldn't necessarily be decisive if more detailed China-specific analysis is available.  But I wonder what such analysis suggests.

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.