"Ecoutez, bravo, 1-0 pour l’Italie"

Quels que soient ses problèmes, ce n'est pas le sens de l'humour qui lui manque: sans doute le chef d'État le plus drôle de la planète!

Merci, Martine!

Des petits trous, des petits trous, toujours des petits trous...

I attended two excellent jazz events last week, jazz being one thing the Chicago music scene excels at (*).

The first was "Brazilian Nights" with Paulinho Garcia and some very talented NU jazz students, at the Regenstein Hall in the NU campus. Best live bossa nova since Eliane Elias's concert in Denmark a couple of years ago. Could not find any of the pieces from the concert I mention above (let me know if you trace Chega de Saudade in Paulinho Garcia's rendition anywhere) but check out Garcia in an amazing duet on Batida Diferente, one piece that well emphasizes both his guitar and vocal abilities.

The second was a super interesting fusion of gypsy jazz, chansons, latin & more-- indeed a "fantastic French-y performance" as they themselves call it-- by Paris La Nuit, at Katerina's. On their site you can directly listen to several nice pieces (try for instance J'ai Un Revolver, that rendition is superb). All the members of the quintet, format in which they played at Katerina's, are superlative on their own  (though only the bassist markets herself properly), while they also almost perfectly synchronize within the team. A plus for Marielle, the talented lead singer and violinist: she's got the style and theatrical presence, something one might think a sine qua non in this business, but nonetheless pretty hard to come by... Way above my uninformed priors; I am sure I'll hear many good things about them in the near future. Check them out also in quartet format, interpreting Serge Gainsbourg's Le Poinçonneur des Lilas (with the risk of committing the sacrilège: despite that song launching Gainsbourg, I prefer Paris La Nuit's jazzy version)

(*) although, talking about Chicago jazz in general, not all is rosy: local organizers & hosts tend to overstate the public's demand for "large band jazz", think long Green Mill Thursdays, for instance...; in other words, I'd vote anytime for New York- vs. New Orleans- type of jazz.

Wine of the Year: Saxum, James Berry Paso Robles 2007

I believe it is the first time since I know it-- though it might well be first time ever--that Wine Spectator's top 10 is dominated by New World wines. The winner is Saxum, James Berry Vineyard Paso Robles 2007, "[a]n amazing wine, dense, rich and layered, offering a mix of power and finesse, with concentrated dark berry fruit, mineral, sage, herb and cedar notes that are pure, intense, focused and persistent. Grenache, Mourvèdre and Syrah. Drink now through 2018" . So we shall!

All in all, there are 5 Californian and 2 Australian wines in top 10, while the old wine powers  (Italy, Portugal, France) have representatives relegated only to places 8-10. I have not tried to date any of WS's 2010 top 10 choices, but this set is so intriguing that I am gonna start getting hold of these wines right now. Remarkable as well is the fact that the French wine selected, a Clos des Papes Châteauneuf-du-Pape, is-- you will hardly believe-- a white, from 2009 (which costs precisely 100 bucks a bottle). That is what I call success of this brand: recall that the 2007 wine of the year was a Clos des Papes Châteauneuf-du-Pape '05; moreover one of my favourite wines ever (arguably, influenced by the ambiance and entourage in the place where I have tried it last) was an egoist  Clos des Papes Châteauneuf-du-Pape '06. All reds: high time we tried their top white, indeed.

Finally, two more brief notes: a) in the full top 100 for 2010, there is a splendid Hungarian wine, which I have tasted a couple of times-- and I am glad the WS editors have eventually discovered it-- a Royal Tokaji Aszú 5 Puttonyos red label from 2006, on position 28-- if you're passing through Budapest, do not leave without it;  b) one of the only two wines in top 100 to obtain the absolute 100 tasting points (the overall ranking is established on more than pure taste assessment-- what I do not particularly like, but well...) is the Dow Vintage Port 2007 (14/100). Now, people who know me well will be able to confirm that I am the biggest fan of Dow's 1994 vintage, hence if the '07 is acclaimed by WS as "[t]he greatest Dow ever made", I look forward for a touch of the sublime, no less.

Weekend econlinks: The quest for perfection

• Gelman writes a useful overview on causality and statistical learning (caveat lector: I have only read through Angrist and Pischke's book, among the three Gelman mentiones; that one is very well written, but aimed at junior graduate students at best: hence, the book's tag "an empiricist's companion" is overselling it; and that has nothing to do with Josh Angrist kindly "advising" me to change my PhD topic/focus, sometime in my beginning graduate years, because 'nobody serious would be interested in structural modelling' :-)). I guess I would position myself more within the “minority view” set, represented here by Heckman (I wouldn’t say that is really a "minority" within Economics alone, by the way), but the usefulness of these debates cannot be questionned. And an outsider's (to Economics) opinion, such as Gelman's, is always more than welcome. Related, the WSJ talks about statistical time travelling to answer interesting counterfactuals; I have a feeling I'll stick to my structural guns for now...

• An excellent article on the junior meritocracy and the perils of standardized testing at very young ages. I share most of the worries expressed therein and indeed agree that the marshmallow test would say at least as much, and probably more, than a standardized intelligence test, in the case of toddlers. My general take is that young humans have much more complex personalities than usually warranted, in ways that elude any catch-all type of tests: after all, some even fall in love at 3 years old.

• The perfect, employer-focused, resume. Uses creativity somewhat differently than its more modern counterparts; I am sure Leonardo would be the one to get all the flyouts and job offers today, as his modern CV were obviously recession-proof.

• The ubiquitous problem with such academic et al rankings (which I brought over and over, including in earlier posts and articles, particularly concerning the academic ranking obsession in Romania, where they also-- still! -- have problems understanding that a publication 'anywhere in ISI' can be total nonsense) is that they try to rank overall, ie. over all disciplines, often over (too) long periods of time etc. The only meaningful hierarchies in science are those done on specific disciplines and, even better, subdisciplines, and over shorter periods of time, thus revealing top new places etc. Then, inter alia, one would not be able to claim that biological sciences are advantaged, since there would be a within-discipline focus. I haven’t heard a single serious (but plenty of marginal) scientist(s) stressing the relevance of the rank of her/his university/institution over that of her/his department/research group. Politicians and journalists should take note, too.

• The perfect chef? That is intriguing enough: I would certainly like to know whether one can trace his whereabouts anywhere around Chicago, in the near future. And the (allegedly) perfect place for the greatest wine-- Rekondo, San Sebastian-- for the far(ther) future.

• Gastronomic sacrilège: where have all the great cheeses gone-- roquefort, camembert, brie de Meaux, Saint-Félicien, gruyère, comté, münster, pont l’évêque, cantal, reblochon, tomme de Savoie, crottin de chavignol?! Worse, together with the cheese, soon gone might be oysters, and epsilon common sense... Quo vadis, France?

• Searching for the perfect chess player, human or machine... Put your money on AI; leave poker for humans.

• The most exciting scientific upshot I've heard about in a great while: explaining the tip-of-the-tongue moments. It comes finally clear (although at this stage I understand it is still just speculative/conjectural, and needs more testing) why polyglots (such as I like to consider myself...) have more of a problem in remembering specific words than people who use a single language: “ […] this kind of forgetfulness is due to infrequency of use; basically, the less often you use a word, the harder it is for your brain to access it." Good, I will feel much better when invoking 'lapsus memoriae' next time :-).

• The quest for the better, simpler, (American) living times: old, but superb Daily Show clip, via Tabarrok, on MR

• Economics research in perfect worlds.


• How very true, though my feeling is that the battle for the brightest junior (and not only) Economists is far from over. It is sadly not Europe overall that might offer an alternative for European economists (not a chance: for starters, Europe needs to cut that embarrasing red tape where academics depend on useless, worthless, ridiculous bureacrats, and to think of attractive real wages... ), but Canada and Australia, which look more and more like worthy competitors to the USA (top; the bulk is way worse than pretty much anywhere in western Europe) places (related, earlier).

On Noncommutative Geometry, String Theory, and the EU vs. US academe

All this in a 2005 interview with Alain Connes, in Iran (initial link to the PDF of the interview via Tyler Cowen, on MR).

First, I think this is a very welcome, very open interview (several questions/comments are just great, congrats to the interviewers!) and it is extremely interesting to see the opinion of this great mathematician (inter alia, Fields Medalist in 1982) on a wide range of topics. The pros: I completely agree with Connes's view on the distinct (ir)relevance of String Theory for Mathematics and respectively, Physics. I also like his (humorous) detachment from being considered the guru of NCG (of which unfortunately I know currently epsilon, albeit once I was almost sure this is what I wanted to do...) and from the tendency of always looking for / looking up to the one mastermind, in general, in any (sub)discipline. So no more on those, read for yourselves in the transcript of the interview. What I don't quite agree with is summarized below:

• resources (money) in research are not important (Connes's context has to do with the large interest/funding in Bio-Mathematics; he actually says "nothing", which I take as far stronger than "not important":-)): to the extent that it shapes incentives, I think it is actually very important. Intrinsic motivation is (the most) relevant, but it is not everything. The marginal (very able-- let us simplify) scientist can be moved into one direction or another by means of designing proper (or improper; but then again, who is to decide what is proper/improper in the context: I think we ought to take the view that lots of money is being thrown in one direction, because there is a lot of interest in that particular direction) extrinsic rewards. That being said, I personally (also) think there are a lot more interesting things in/to Maths than Biomaths :-).
• the European academic system is better than the US one. Hmmm, this is an endless debate and, as always, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Inter alia, it goes back to whether you need/want tenure or not in the academe (see for instance such a debate I've earlier linked to, especially within Economics) and to what goals you expect researchers to meet. And this also goes beyond one or another discipline, although it is perhaps interesting to discuss it indeed in the light of fundamental Mathematics, given its very abstract nature. Now, Connes believes that a system such as the French CNRS (which possibly is in the process of changing since 2005, when this interview took place) is perfect for mathematicians working on extremely complicated issues, that take years and years and years, since they are insulated from being subjected to those "n publications" requirement per year and in general from the eternal harassment of frequently showing how you compare to your peers, something specific to the top US institutions (Connes dismisses that the US places are ultimately inherently better in producing top scientists, because they get all the top European people-- not (entirely) true and to a great extent working eventually against his thesis, e.g. need to justify preferences of those very high European achievers for the US places, but let us not get also into that). The potential problem (sacrifice), as acknowledged by Connes, is the cost of such a practice, given that a lot of people might end up not producing anything and that the vast majority of them will be very far from getting Fields Medals or similar recognition among their peers... I say that the main problem is who bears that cost, namely the taxpayers here; and the public (not all of them having the same goals as Connes or as the specific, minority, group of the scientists, in general) is justified in knowing and assessing (whenever it so pleases) where its money is going and what precisely it pays for (if the funding is private, all this discussion has a completely different flavour-- remark that the US top academic places are privately funded, while all European examples Connes mentiones are public institutions; in my view, this again tips the balance towards the US academia). Related, but extremely surprising, Connes seems to be nostalgic after the Soviet Union academic system, but I think he deeply confuses things-- anyway, let us just say for the sake of this brief post that, fortunately, France was never quite like the Soviet Union, despite its tendency to lean extreme left, particularly within its academe... As for the claim that the Soviets would have been far ahead US and everybody else, if their system remained in place, I guess we'll never know (though I have opposite priors). And I think it is better we don't... So I am rather dissapointed that one of my idols in Mathematics has/had (this was '05) such, hmm: uninformed, views. But then again, I've always thought Economics (Not Politics. Politics is just a surface, not relevant in the long run, ultimately all boils down to Economics-- really!) is far less intuitive than Mathematics or Theoretical Physics :-).
  

I am sure one can go on and on, but I trust the main ideas are all outlined above (read also between the lines).

Espèce en voie d'extinction

... le pauvre petit point-virgule

Is flexicurity an alternative for the French labour market?

Probably not, says Gilles Saint-Paul in his assessment of the recent labour market agreements from France. I agree (and strongly recommend Saint-Paul's short but concise essay on VoxEU, one of my best readings this week).

While it is imperative to make the French labour market more flexible (remember however how a small step in this direction, the infamous CPE, was received in France 2 years ago), trying to handle this as part of a flexicurity package, with generous unemployment benefits complemented by active labour market policies meant to induce unemployed workers to search for and accept jobs fast, might have different effects in France. Next to Saint-Paul's reasons for why the security part in a flexicurity package would possibly misfire in France, here's one more. A major difference between Denmark and France relevant for this context is the fact that France is a melting pot of ethnicities (though, as expected, Sarkozy's proposal of 'officializing' that, by allowing the collection of ethnic statistics, never made it through the Conseil d'Etat) whereas Denmark is incredibly homogenous population-wise (not for nothing, they also fight hard to preserve the status quo; the Danes currently have the most stringent immigration laws within Europe and the nationalistic 'Danish People's Party' has been part of the government coalition since 2001); my take on this issue is that, in its current form, the Danish flexicurity would not be sustainable in the long run even in Denmark, should the composition of its population change significantly. See also a previous, related, discussion on whether Denmark can be scaled up, in general.

Beware the Euronomics. Plus some further thoughts on the economics curricula in Romania and The Netherlands

Retain at least the conclusion of this excellent article (applying, unfortunately, well beyond just France and Germany, within EU or Europe in general), which draws attention to the enormous, though often neglected*, importance of (high) school economics education, with emphasis on the (very real) risks of learning absolute nonsense from state-sponsored economics courses.

"If countries like France and Germany hope to get their nations on a new economic track, they might start paying more attention to what their kids are learning in the classroom".

(HT to Greg Mankiw)

Further remarks: in some very recent EU members, the indoctrination with anti-market bias (or, more so: simply flawed, baseless ideas, debunked decades ago) is carried on within university level economics courses. That is at least doubling the harm, by directly affecting the local would-be economic 'elite'. And yes, I am particularly hinting to the fantastic Romanian economics curricula and textbooks (which I had again the pleasure to talk about, with Romanian economics students and lecturers, in my short recent visit to Romania), designed or written by renowed academic economists with hundreds of published articles... in every morning newspaper (see here an older entry of mine, in Romanian, inter alia counting the total number of peer-reviewed ISI-publications-- ISI set which is enormous and very heterogenous, as we all know, hardly an indicator of quality, when taken as a whole-- within Economics, for 2006, having at least one co-author with a Romanian affiliation-- any university or other research institute in Romania, that is; or see directly on the Ad Astra site precisely which were those articles and where from (some are not even from Econ departments...), for 2005 (2 articles), 2006 (3 articles), 2007 (3 articles)-- btw, these are not typos: the number of articles is indeed for the whole country, for all ISI-recognized Economics journals, for those entire years). Before the economic curriculum gets to be reformed (or, allow me to rephrase: thrown out and started all over, from scratch), take my advice and do all you can to study university level economics somewhere else, anywhere else...

* in some EU countries, such as the Netherlands, the high-school economics curriculum has been recently the topic of intense public debates, hence there "often neglected" (see starting paragraph of this post) does not apply strictly. A government-sponsored commission having among the members some top Dutch academic economists (the head of the commission was Coen Teulings, who-- sort of disclaimer :-)-- also happens to be my PhD advisor and co-author in a couple of projects) was asked to thoroughly investigate the economics curriculum and to come up with an assessment and eventual reform proposals. Their report, entitled "Economie moet je doen" (my translation: "You have to do Economics") can be downloaded here, in PDF format (relevant only for those who can read Dutch; unfortunately, I am not aware of a translation in English). This report has been and to some extent is still under attack by some other (typically older generation) economists from the Netherlands, but I have to say, with the caveat of not having followed all the discussions in this context, that so far I have not found any convincing argument on the critics' side.

Song of the day: "Kala", by Yann Tiersen

THE perfect song for today is "Kala", one of the pieces from the latest album of Yann Tiersen, Les Retrouvailles. About Tiersen, one of my very favourite musicians ever, I've written a lot on this blog already, e.g. here or here or here. Kala is also featuring Elizabeth Fraser, from the former "Cocteau Twins" group (wiki, official, pieces from them on YouTube). Enjoy!

Song of the day: "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane

Intro: without any direct connection a priori (though, thinking again about it, perhaps I was in a psychedelic state to give Marie-George Buffet 5 points...), I recalled the song I propose as today's song following a short discussion in the comments section of my friend Dan's post about the French candidates to presidency (you should do that politiquiz as well: as for myself, I got Sarkozy and Bayrou on the top places with 10 points both- never mind whom I got on the third place :-)- and I trust the French will be smart enough to do likewise in their fast approaching elections...).

But to get to the gist of this post. Today's song is a classic by a band that belonged (to some extent) to the "oldies" category already by the time I was born (notwithstanding that they had two successor bands and thus "continued" far in the 90's...). And that happened quite some time ago :-). Nevertheless, this band (co)pioneered the whole psychedelic rock movement and managed to create some immortal and superb (or, even better: immortally superb) songs. If you haven't yet realized (shame on you! :-)) which band I am talking about, this is the folk-rockers band Jefferson Airplane, of course! Their wikipedia entry is almost exhaustive this time and these guys are probably very well known anyways, hence I don't think there is any scope for me to write more about them here. Instead, let me put some links to clips from YouTube (by now, this should clearly come forth as my favourite place online!) with Jefferson Airplane performing some of their masterpieces. And let me start with my favourite from them and today's song and probably their most famous creation (song written by singer-songwriter Grace Slick): White Rabbit (with a great live performance at Woodstock, 1969!). The wicked lyrics for this song are here- and I leave it to you to figure out what Grace is singing about :-). An equally popular hit was Somebody to Love (yet again from Woodstock '69), written by Grace's brother in law (it was all in the family...) or try this version from Monterey, 1967. In my opinion these two musical gems mentioned above outweigh everything else from Jefferson Airplane, but there are also other very interesting songs from them, such as: Today, Volunteers, Crown of Creation. Listen also to the beautiful instrumental piece they played very late in 1996, Embryonic Journey- with the occasion of their induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and this should say a lot: they were inductees in the same year as superlative musical phenomena like Pink Floyd and David Bowie, who are my all time favourites, so there you go, I shared this secred with you- but I'll talk about them with many other occasions...). Enjoy Jefferson Airplane's masterpieces for now!

France just opening UFO files- I know what's going on!

It is very clear why they chose to do this right now. The Franch 'Man in Black' can finally prove that the French 'Lady in Red' (more details here or, particularly, here on Dan's blog and comments section) is a dangerous alien. Go Sarko! Speaking of that, Chirac came to his senses and gave full support to the MiB against the aliens (ergo, the full exposure of the poor ET's on the web- that site seems under heavy alien attack at this very moment, though...don't know how much it'll resist). However, Bernard Salanié is right in pointing out problems in all the candidates' labour market strategies (but France entirely is sort of an alien world when it comes to the labour market and all that). If anything, Bayrou looks more competent. Is his file also to be found among the ET encounter dossiers or is he an undercover MiB ?

Scrisorile noastre, scrisorile lor. Pateticii nostri, pateticii lor

Rogozanu scrie despre scrisoarea "intelectualilor" francezi, "Avant qu’il ne soit trop tard" , pentru sustinerea 'candidatei sperantei', ie. Ségolène Royal- "la candidate de l’espérance" (ce fel de speranta? "Une espérance à la fois sociale et écologique, éthique et démocratique, française et européenne, ne sacrifiant pas les conditions de vie et de travail à la modernisation économique. L’espérance d’une république nouvelle, rompant avec un présidentialisme étouffant pour un parlementarisme vivant. [etc. , oh-la-la]", impotriva 'candidatului fricii', ie. Nicolas Sarkozy, "le candidat de la peur" (scrisoarea continua sa explice ce fel de frici 'exploateaza' sau 'inspira' Sarkozy: "Des peurs qu’il exploite – celles de l’avenir, du monde, de l’étranger, des jeunes – mais aussi des peurs qu’il inspire en convoquant l’imaginaire de l’homme fort, du chef vindicatif et exalté, épris du pouvoir et de lui-même... "). Eu (si Dan) prefer o confruntare "Lady in Red" vs. "Man in Black", ii caracterizeaza mult mai scurt si concis :-).

Voilà, au si ei pateticii lor! In cazul de fata nu e vorba nici de stanga, nici de dreapta (vezi Rogozanu mai sus), acestea sunt minore aici, e vorba de gregaritate si prostie. Generala. Si la noi si la ei. Prostie, repet, nu maniheism, à la Andrei Cornea. LOL, domnule Cornea, LOL...

Song of the day: Yann Tiersen's "Rue des cascades"

While I've been too busy in the last days and my "song of the day" rubrique hasn't been updated for a while, the artist and song I propose today more than make make up for all that delay.

There is one (perhaps only one) musician whose concerts I would in no way miss, should he perform anywhere around the place I were located. This person is Yann Tiersen, a true musical genius (unequalled composer; superlative player of pretty much any conventional music instrument, not to mention that he uses many unconventional ones!- I am not kidding, see the evidence below). Unfortunately, I wasn't lucky and didn't yet get a chance to actually see him on stage: the last missed opportunity was exactly a week ago, on Monday the 12th of Feb, when he performed in Amsterdam's Paradiso (and when you think that he could have done so in all the years I was fulltime in Amsterdam!). Nothing unexpected, the tickets for his concert were sold out long time before the date of the concert. I have written a bit on Tiersen and his music also before, inter alia already mentioning some of my favourite pieces from him and linking to some excellent clips available on YouTube; hence, I will not repeat myself - and cut short the introduction for the purpose of this post.

The song for today (and for the last 5 days or so...) is Yann Tiersen's sweet & intriguing "Rue des cascades" (vocals Claire Pichet). The linked clip contains sequences from the movie "La vie rêvée des anges" (which I haven't yet seen, but it is on my list of "must see movies"), which has "Rue des cascades" as one of its soundtracks. Talking about movie soundtracks, Tiersen has got a lot of experience and outstanding successes with those (and this includes basically the entire soundtrack set for one of my favourite movies of all times, "Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain", likely his most famous). See also a live interpretation of "Rue des cascades".

I believe that all of Tiersen's creations are masterpieces in their own right (as I already stated, this guy is a genius); however, given time and space constraints (next to youtube availability...), I'll single out only an additional few of my top favourite ones, next to those I mentioned in my old "Monochrome" post and to today's song of the day. Such outstanding pieces are: "La boulange" (excellent original clip of this song!) or "Comptine d' un autre été" (with a perfectly assorted videoclip!). You can also watch the whole short (about 12 min) animated movie "Le cyclope de la mer", with superb music composed entirely by Yann Tiersen (first part movie, second part movie).

Quote for the week 4th- 10th of Feb '07

Quand un homme a un bec de canard, des ailes de canard et des pattes de canards: c'est un canard. C'est vrai aussi pour les petits merdeux.

Michel Audiard

Quote for previous week

Netvibes and Politics 2.0

I've read an interesting article in the latest Economist print edition (Feb 3rd- Feb 9th) about Netvibes and Tariq Krim, its founder and CEO. Find below some excerpts from the article, dealing with the (unavoidable) political capital that comes with his very succesful (so far) enterprise. It looks like the new marketing guru has still got good ideas and I am sure we haven't seen the best of him yet- in entrepreneurship or politics...

France's politicians have also noticed Netvibes, and have courted Mr Krim. Speaking in December at a conference in Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate in France's forthcoming presidential election, cited him as one of the country's examples of “exceptional talent” in the internet realm. Not to be outdone, Ségolène Royal, Mr Sarkozy's Socialist rival for the presidency, is using Netvibes to distribute news about her campaign.

Since the grim blocks of Paris's banlieues, best known for the car-burning riots of 2005, are far from Mr Krim's soigné background, he has resisted attempts to make him a mascot for successful beurs—French slang for people, such as the footballer Zinedine Zidane, of North African descent. He is, however, making his own political use of technology, bringing together 1,000 French business people and activists in an invitation-only online think-tank called Digital Catalyst. “There's a lot of people like me in France, but we don't know each other,” he says of the group. “It's key that the right people meet one another. If this works, we could have Politics 2.0.”

Nos Télécoms

Bernard Salanié et sa chère France(Télécom): c'est bien drôle! Dan, mon vieux, pas de problèmes avec France ? :-).

PS. Ça me fait penser à mon très cher Rom(Télécom)...