The Economic Way of Thinking

Whining About Wine Etiquette

Happy New Year! 

Our gracious New Year's Eve hosts know how to put on a party.  At their house, the food is always plentiful and diverse.  The bar is open all night, and it's a su casa es mi casa/smoke 'em if you got 'em attitude towards beverages.  Sports are on the television up until it's time for the always entertaining and awkward Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin countdown to the new year.  (By the way, here's video of Kathy sneaking in a bad, bad word during the broadcast; no word yet on whether or not there will be regulatory consequences or if her check will have to be forfeited.) 

Of course, many people aren't like our New Year's Eve hosts, and many parties involve bringing good wine to a house only to have the host not offer to open it.  Since simply asking your host if the wine can be opened is sometimes a violation of social norms, strategies must be pursued to make sure your bottle gets opened.  Some thoughts about overcoming this extremely serious coordination problem are below the fold:

Culinary Change Comes in Baby Steps

One of the things I've missed most since moving away from the D.C. area in 2004 is ethnic food.  There's good food in Macon, but the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market as they say.  In our time here, we've seen dozens of southern style and BBQ restaurants come and go, but, much to my chagrin, there has been scant entry into the ethnic food market in Macon.  (Here and here are my two favorite southern style eateries, by the way; the latter has a lot of Allman Brothers history throughout.)

One small step for mankind (or at least for Maconites) occurred several weeks ago when a new restaurant downtown, Lemongrass Thai, opened.  Their lunch menu is cheap, and the red curry is spectacular.  Their tapas and tom yung koong soup on the dinner menu are very good.  

If you're a local reader, check the place out and help expand culinary diversity in Macon--if not for you, for me!

Coming to a Grocery Store Near You?

In response to challenging market conditions, Giant Food stores are cleaning up their stores, changing store layouts, and innovating.  One innovation in particular caught my eye: personal scanners.  From what I've read, it sounds like you can simply use a hand-held device to scan items as you go and then swipe a card to pay.  No checkout lines and no waiting behind confused customers in the self-scan lanes.   

We don't have any Giant stores here in Macon, but I remember being impressed by them when living in D.C.  Can anyone tell me whether or not the personal scanners at Giant are greatly improving your grocery shopping experience? 

Oh, to be able to avoid the tedium of the checkout lines by instead scanning as you go!

Rhinoceros for Dinner, Anyone?

Bjorn Lomborg is someone working on environmental issues who clearly seems to understand his economics.  His Skeptical Environmentalist is an updated and more empirical attempt to push Julian Simon's claim that the world is getting better as a whole.  Here's his latest piece from yesterday's Wall Street Journal on the "climate-industrial complex."

Thanks to a recent story on NPR, I was made aware of conservation scientist Gary Paul Nabhan's work.  Like Lomborg, Nabhan seems to get the basics of economics.  For example, in his book, Renewing America's Food Traditions, he says that one of the best things we can do for endangered species is eat them! 

Nabhan's research has led to a "Taste of Place" project that encourages local preservation of endangered products.  Here's a map of the US that better explains the project. 

The map defines America as regions of different foods.  Macon, GA, for example, is on the edge of being "cornbread and BBQ" and "chestnut."  If you click on your region, you can get information about indigenous foods and recipes for the endangered products in your area.  You can also learn about ways to get endangered products onto your dinner plate or in a restaurant near you. 

A delicious looking bison stew recipe is below the fold...

Amen

From this morning’s Macon Telegraph: “Liquor ban doesn’t make sense.”  According to Dusty Nix of the editorial board, 

Sunday liquor laws in Georgia are nothing short of nonsensical: On-premise consumption is legal, while purchasing beer, wine or spirits for consumption elsewhere is not. You can get snockered at a public place and then get behind the wheel; what you can’t do on Sunday in Georgia is drive sober to a store, purchase the adult beverage of your choice and drink it in the relative safety — yours and everyone else’s — of your own home.