Adventures in Onionism

MRB and I made beer at Matt's house. It was my first time. Here's how we did it. 1. Clean everything real well. 2. Buy grain. 3. Take a close-up of said grain. 4. Prove that since you're using both Belgian and German ingredients, you must really know what you're doing. 5. Get some yeast growing. 6. Melt some sugar. 7. Heat up water. 8. Put your filter ("false bottom") together so you can drain sugary water from the bottom. 9. Poor the hot water in and mix in your grains. 10. Repeatedly say "This smells like Grape Nuts!" Let sit for 90 minutes. 11. Poor out sugary stuff from the bottom via your false bottom while adding hot water on top. 12. Collect all the good stuff from the bottom. Use foil or something so you don't stir it all up when add hot water on top. 13. Boil it outside because people don't like Grape Nuts. 14. Skim the gross stuff off the top. 15. Add too many...

Here's what I'll be doing this weekend, along with my first ever homebrewing with the guys in Philly. And following twitter updates about the Barkley Marathons. Good luck Heather!

I think I linked to the first one of these when it came out a couple years ago. Here's some more. Watch it full screen. Yosemite HD II from Project Yosemite on Vimeo .

GF was in town for the weekend. We saw the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra . Why? Because I read about orchestras in an economics journal article I taught my students last semester. An oldy but a goody from Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse: "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians." A change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras-adoption of "blind" auditions with a "screen" to conceal the candidate's identity from the jury-- provides a test for sex-biased hiring. Using data from actual auditions, in an individual framework, we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired. Although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction, the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras.

I came here to get work done.

A few weeks ago around the time I was running 20 miles in urban North Philly on a paved bike path (with occasional unpaved horse trails on the side) with Mark, I came across a few things about the most remote place in each state/the US. North Philly, they are not. A Dirtbag Diaries podcast about a couple visiting the most remote spot in each state. The couple's website, Project Remote .   The Bedrock & Paradox guy wrote a post on remoteness and different ways to measure it shortly before that.  By some of the common definitions for the lower 48 (from a road, county with the fewest roads) I got pretty darn close to on my CDT hike. But not so much in the last few years.

Santa Monica Mountains 3/8/14 San Jacinto (Cactus to Clouds) 3/10/14 Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim 3/12/14 Start Zoraster's Temple from Tip Off Down Splits Up Humphreys Back Down Up, Again Good Day's Work

I went to LA and ran in the Santa Monica mountains. Then I watched Nano run the LA marathon, and Icut through a bike u-lock on Venice Beach. Then I ran from 500 feet elevation in Palm Springs, CA to 10,300 feet elevation at the top of San Jacinto and back down. Then I drove through J Tree on my way to the Grand Canyon, where I ran rim to rim to rim in 12 hours. Then I did a bit of nothing on Humphreys Peak outside Flagstaff and in Warm Springs Wilderness outside Kingman. Then I climbed a couple small peaks in Mojave National Preserve. Then I went to a development economics conference. Then I ran some in the Malibu mountains.  That's all. Back to work. A few photos are below, more are here .

I finished spring break with the PacDev (Pacific Conference for Development Economics) at UCLA on Saturday. My favorite two papers were " The Political Legacies Of Combat: Attitudes Towards War And Peace Among Israeli Ex-Combatants " by Grossman, Manekin, and Miodownik, and " The Causal Effect of Environmental Catastrophe on Long-Run Economic Growth " by Hsiang and Jina, which show that combat exposure causes Israeli soldiers to be anti-reconciliation with Palestine and more prejudiced against Palestinians, and typhoons are responsible for a crap-ton (that's the scientific term) of long-term GDP loss. The latter is maybe not surprising to the lay person, but this seems like a pretty strong paper in the "geography" column in the geography vs. institutions debate. I haven't read the papers yet, but the identification methods of instrumental variables in the first paper and panel data and fixed effects in the second seemed reasonable in the short pre...

Back in LA for a conference.

Ran from rim to rim to rim of the Grand Canyon. Took me 12:12. I couldn't even walk because I was so sore from Cactus to Clouds, so I'm pretty happy with my performance. It was a really fun run. I went down South Kaibab, up and back down North Kaibab (which is fun and runnable) and then up Bright Angel (which wasn't quite as runnable as N. Kaibab, given both steepness and it being at the end of a long day.) I think I'll go check out Flagstaff tomorrow. I did 10,000+ feet of climbing Monday, and 15,000+ today, so it would only make sense if I did 20,000+ by climbing that big mountain outside Flag three times on Friday, but I am confident that is not going to happen. I'm a little worried that if I stop walking my calf is going to cramp and will never come undone. Oh well.

Ran from Palm Springs up 10,000 vertical feet up San Jacinto. Discovered that Trader Joe's sesame cashews aren't vegan. Cried the whole way down.

Ran 20 miles in the Santa Monica mountains with Megan and Marshall this morning. I mean, they made me wake up at 6:30, but with jetlag, I barely even noticed. I think I'll run Cactus to Clouds on Monday, then head to the Grand Canyon and do R2R2R on Wednesday.

But if all you are growing in your public garden plot is one kale tree, you really need to work a little harder.

Bridge on the Pennypack trail

Ran the fabulous Pennypack trail today. Northeast Philly's finest, all the way to prison on the Delaware River.

MRB and I went out to French Creek State Park. Mostly ended up hiking because there was still a lot of snow (more than in Philly), but it was fun. The park is mosly flat, but we had the trails all to ourselves. This Horseshoe Trail goes all the way from Valley Forge out to the AT.