This week’s Carnival of the Recipes, recipes from some of the greatest cooks in the blogosphere, is ably hosted by Kris of Anywhere But Here. She’s organized the recipes by color and we’ve got all the colors of the rainbow to chose from.

It’s pretty slim pickin’s in the blogosphere today. Does the flu have everybody down? Here’s wha’t caught my eye this morning:

• LaShawn Barber
  comments on Black History Month.
• David Adesnik of Oxblog
  consider whether Democrats can get tough on national security.
• Point/Counter-Point on Lynne Stewart’s conviction for facilitating her client’s direction of terrorist activities from Powerline and Talkleft.
• America’s great playwright, Arthur Miller, has died. See Stark Offerings
  for news aggregation.
• An excellent post on Lynne Stewart from the excellent blogger, The Talking Dog.

That’s the lot.

I have some questions about the stock market and maybe somebody out there has the answers handy. If not, I’ll start bugging some of my economist resources out there in the blogosphere and report back. You frequently hear it claimed that, on average and over time, investments in equities have earned about 8%. I don’t have any problem believing that. I also believe that those earnings come largely in big spikes (like the one we’ve just been through) rather than a regular year-to-year 8%. In the period between 1965 and 1981 there were no earnings from investments in equities (on average) IIRC.

So here are my questions. Do mutual funds—taken as a whole—mimic the behavior of the market? How about some small (but prominent) selection of mutual funds? How about a single mutual fund?

My intuition into this is that mutual funds taken as a whole probably don’t mimic the behavior of the market that well. And that any small group of funds or a single fund is even worse.

Does anybody know about this stuff? Or have any references?

Different people have different ideas of what constiitutes a nice, romantic, Valentine’s Day dinner but mine is preparing a fabulous dinner at home. Here are some tips for doing it that I’ve learned from long, painful, experience:

1. Give yourself plenty of time.

   Plan in advance. Work through the logistics of shopping, preparing, cooking, and serving. If you can, get home well before she does.

2. Prepare something she really likes.

   In my case it’s easy—my wife likes nothing better than a good steak. And my local grocery carries prime beef.

3. Keep it simple.

   This is not the time to be too adventurous. Grill or roast chicken breasts. Poach chicken breasts. Grill or roast steaks. See tip #2 above. Lots of really good restaurants have carry-out so don’t be afraid of getting some things from restaurants. But prepare at least one thing yourself even if it’s not perfect.

4. Leave the kitchen spotless.

   Floor, counter-surfaces, stove, everything.

5. If what she loves to eat is fish or seafood, carry out or go out. No overpowering smells!
6. Set the table.

We have sterling, china, and crystal (the perils of my past as an antique dealer). I’ll use them. Some small additional touch is nice. A single rose in a vase. A fancy napkin fold. Something like that. Have a card at her place. Actually I’ll have two cards (my wife is very much into cards): one romantic, one humorous.

7. Chocolate.
8. Did I mention leaving the kitchen spotless?

Here’s the menu I’m planning on. Note that everything can be prepared ahead except for the actual grilling of the steaks and the baking of the chocolate cakes.

Filet mignon
Tourte Limousine (seasoned potatoes molded in pastry and baked in a flan ring)
Spinach Campagnola
A decent, California Cabernet (my wife’s a California girl)

And, for dessert, molten chocolate cakes. These were invented by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and, in my opinion, are the very best reason to have ramekins handy.

Molten Chocolate Cakes

Make 4 6 oz. cakes

1 stick unsalted butter
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
¼ cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F.
2. Butter and lightly flour four 6-oz. ramekins, tapping out the excess flour. Place the ramekins on a baking sheet.
3. Melt the butter with the chocolate in a double boiler over simmering water.
4. Beat the eggs, egg yolks, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl at high speed until thickened and pale.
5. Whisk the chocolate until smooth.
6. Fold the chocolate and flour into the egg mixture.
7. Spoon the batter into the ramekins and bake for 12 minutes or until the sides of the cakes are firm but the centers are soft.
8. Let the cakes cool in the ramekins for 1 minute, then cover each with an inverted dessert plate. Carefully turn each one over, let stand for 10 seconds and then unmold. Serve immediately.

There’s nothing like waking up to a dog standing over and vomiting on you to get you up in the morning full of vim, vigor, and vitality! There’s nothing wrong with her—she was just telling me she was hungry and wanted to be fed. Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:

• His haiku were poor
  A Guy in Pajamas posts
  Does seppuku wait?
• Jane Galt of Asymmetrical Information
  has an interesting story of conflicting interests: organized labor, Walmart, local workers, and (one not mentioned)
  local consumers.
• Backcountry Conservative has another instance
  of targeting journalists—this time in Somalia.
• The Bull Moose urges Democrats
  to celebrate the good. I sometimes wonder whether some Democrats haven’t confused fundamental liberal
  values with The Prime Directive.
• Daniel Drezner’s reaction to a recent Economist
  article on Rice’s trip: Europe just isn’t that important anymore.
• Dean Esmay reports on the Angel Light
  which (if it pans out) is apparently a combination X-ray goggles and death ray. I always thought that Dr. Zarkoff was Russian but apparently he’s Canadian. Blame Canada!
• Infidel at Duophony has the best commentary on the revelation that the NPRK has nuclear
  weapons that I’ve seen so far. Comments on his site errored out so I’ll make my observation here: the smallest
  effective negotiating table in this matter has three sides. No agreement on this that doesn’t have Chinese participation
  is worth a damn.
• There’s an interesting celebrity death match over at The Wall Street Journal
  on the real dog in the manger: health care (hat tip: EconLog).
• I see that one of my predictions is proving true: Iraqi security
  is cracking down on terrorists (hat tip: Mudville Gazette).
• From shrinkette: talk radio run by mental patients.
  I’m not a bit surprised.

That’s the lot.

Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:

• Dustbury remembers Runaway singer, Del Shannon, who took his own life fifteen years ago today.
• Musicians don’t earn living from copyright, copyright hurts creators (hat tip: Boing Boing).
  Copyrights are based on a flawed model of creativity. Not only don’t they incentivize creation they
  reduce compensation for authors. But they do reduce the risks for publishers. Now there’s a
  reason to grant a monopoly.
• There’s a new edition of CSI: Medblogs up at CodeBlueBlog.
  This time he’s investigating the death of the president of Georgia.
• The New Sisyphus didn’t think much of Secretary Rice’s speech in Paris yesterday.
  To put it mildly.
• Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report has
  a response from the professor who achieved some notoriety for failing a Kuwaiti student not long ago
  and was a recent blog celebre (hat tip: PoliBlog).
• Another laser aimed at a commercial jet cockpit (hat tip: Terrorism Unveiled).

That’s the lot.

UPDATE: Well, I walked into the office of a client who was in a pretty fair state of panic, evaluated the situation, solved the problem (confirming my reputation for omnipotence), did a little self-promotion, and left.

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year and, according to the traditional calendar, is the beginning of the Year of the Rooster. So, for all our readers who celebrate this day, may you have prosperity every year.

In my own tradition, it’s Ash Wednesday—a very different holiday, indeed.

Macbeth is 1000 years old this year (funny, he doesn’t look a day over 900). Not the play—the actual historic king of Scotland. And, as it turns out, he wasn’t as bad a guy as Shakespeare painted him:

Historians and politicians have begun a campaign to rehabilitate Macbeth by claiming that his reputation has been unfairly maligned by William Shakespeare.

A drive to dispel the Scottish king’s image as an evil murderer, whose name has become synonymous with bad luck and superstition, has been launched in the 1,000th year since his birth.

A group of eminent historians have persuaded politicians in the Scottish Parliament to sign a motion calling for Macbeth’s achievements to be recognised.

He reigned for 17 years—quite a period of time for an early medieval Scottish king, he was a good king and fairly popular (the crops were said to have been good during his reign), he was pious or at least politically savvy (he is known to have visited Rome during the papal jubilee in 1050), and he didn’t murder Duncan in his sleep—he killed him in combat. At that time the succession of Scottish kings was determined by challenge.

Here’s what Shakespeare had to say about him:

MACDUFF

Not in the legions
Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d
In evils to top Macbeth.

MALCOLM

I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name…

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3

So why the smear job? It may have had something to do with the fact that the reigning monarch of England when the play was written was James I who claimed descent from Duncan and Malcolm (who succeeded Macbeth). Nothing like sucking up to the king to give your play a little oomph.

Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:

• Could someone please explain to me how the federal government investing FICA receipts
  in mutual funds is politicizing “investments on the part of the president and congress”
  but the president and Congress selecting mutual funds in which you may designate a portion
  of the FICA you pay be invested isn’t? (hat tip: Angry Bear)
• LaShawn Barber has a good round-up of links on the Eason Jordan affair.
• Wretchard of Belmont Club never ceases to amaze me by his ability to
  imagine worse eventualities than I do:

  But the situation will be even more dangerous than Coll suggests. Long before a faculty lounge in Islamabad or Riyadh realizes it can build a bomb alone and secretly, the same thought will have occurred to individuals in Tel Aviv, New Delhi or Palo Alto. Any Islamic group that believes it can attack New York deniably should convince itself that no similar group can nuke Mecca at the height of the pilgrim season. In fact, the whole problem that Coll describes should be generalized. The only thing worse than discovering that New York has been destroyed by persons unknown is to find that Islamabad has been vaporized by a group we’ve never heard of.

• I agree with Bull Moose’s observation that
  the Democrats need more Reagan and less Eeyore. I can only think of one instance in which the less positive,
  upbeat candidate won the presidency: Nixon’s defeat of Hubert Humphrey, the “Happy Warrior”.
  Humphrey lost that one by being a good soldier and not going after Johnson’s Viet Nam war policy.
• Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine
  draws our attention of a collection of webcams covering
  the Mardi Gras goings-on in New Orleans.
• There’s a round-up of Shrove Tuesday customs from The Curt Jester.
• Different River
  draws our attention to a really great story on true entrepeneurship. Really worth a read.
• TMLutas vs. Huffington.
• Macroblog has a round-up of media commentary on Bush’s proposed budget. (hat tip: The Dead Parrot Society)

That’s the lot.