Tuesday's Election Predictions

There's no way from watching the news how one can get a sense of how an upcoming election will turn out. Candidates and political parties do not provide legitimate assessments of their chances, but rather engage in posturing. News organizations don't want to influence elections by saying there is a particular inevitable outcome. Polls are caveated with a margin of error and distorted because of significant early absentee voting. All we can glean is that the Republicans have a good chance to gain at least 39 House seats and a remote chance of getting 51 in the Senate. Interestingly today's news is full of increased public optimism from the Democrats that they'll hold both chambers and caution by the Republicans in assessing what will happen on Tuesday. Indeed, RNC Chairman Steele said that even if the Republicans came close to taking the House, it would be a significant accomplishment. So is the tide really turning? Certainly the news and public statements say "Yes."

But as I mentioned before, there is a neat resource called Intrade, where futures contracts are traded on all sorts of political and other events of public interest. And today, the futures for Republican control of the House are still over 90, and the overs/unders for Republican House gains is right about 60. So it seems in reality that nothing has changed. One interesting event is a surge today in the futures on Republicans taking at least 50 Senate seats (and particularly the Senate being split 50-50), a one day increase from 21 to 32. Still long odds, but something significant must have happened today to trigger such a jump.

Toronto Dim Sum Crawl--Six Restaurants In Six Hours

In hindsight it was probably a crazy thing, and it wasn't planned in advance. However this past Sunday I ended up going to six different Toronto area dim sum restaurants between 9 am and 3 pm. Originally I was just going to hit two or three places with the intent of judging the quality of Toronto area dim sum as well as to look for innovative items, but it ended up being more like a marathon.

My morning started out at Dragon Dynasty on Brimley Road in Scarborough. Arriving a little after 9 am I ran into the Sunday dim sum dilemma. The good thing about early dim sum is you avoid the crowds. The bad thing though is not all the dim sum is out. I was very surprised to find that Dragon Dynasty was largely cart service, with a few off the menu items. It turned out to be the only cart style of the day. And did the carts come slowly. After a considerable while I had taken only one item, a scallop shrimp dumpling, and ordered another from the menu, the rice noodle roll with scallop and snow pea leaves, which interestingly used the large pea leaves. Both items were fantastic, particularly the wrappers and fun. It was at this point, with the prospect of a long wait for who knows what that I began to launch my dim sum hopping plan.

Next stop was Regal 16 Seafood in Richmond Hill, which was probably a 25 minute surface street drive from Dragon Dynasty. I hadn't realized until then that Toronto's equivalent of the San Gabriel Valley, covering Scarborough, Richmond Hill, Markham and parts of other communities like North York, was similar in size to the SGV, though obviously not as densely Chinese. At 10:30 am, Regal 16 still had plenty of room. I had the beef dumplings with wolfberries, the vegetarian chicken bun with ginger sauce and the garlic chicken pastry rolls, with the latter being the only loser. It was here I decided to only eat some of each order and save the rest in lieu of going out to dinner.

I then drove over to Highway 7 in Richmond Hill to O Mei, another highly rated Chowhound favorite. But something was wrong. While Regal 16 was full when I left, O Mei, which wasn't that big to begin with, was half empty. Furthermore, the dim sum menu was very ordinary. I ended up ordering just the rice noodle rolls with beef and the diced lotus root meat patties. Not to say that these weren't good, but hardly Toronto's finest.


Moving a couple of blocks west on Highway 7, I landed at Rich Land Chinese cuisine. The restaurant was bustling and packed. I ordered one XL item, the garoupa with fruit, as well as the chicken avocado rolls. Actually the garoupa with fruit wasn't as exciting as it sounded--battered garoupa slices with four red grapes on the side. The chicken avocado roll was essentially an egg roll with a chicken and avocado filling, and was very good.

At this point I was starting to get full so I thought I'd drive back to Scarborough and scout around. What I hadn't discovered until the last day of my previous Toronto visit was that a lot of Chinese shopping centers are barely visible from the street, if at all. This trip I discovered a whole bunch of them. Driving down Warden Ave. I spotted another large Chinese shopping center which was actually highly visible, and moreover the signage "Sam Woo." I knew from prior trips to Toronto that L.A.'s Sam Woo chain had set up shop in Toronto, and I had often wondered whether they were able to keep up with the high Chinese food standards in Toronto. So in I went. I wasn't surprised that the choices here were more mundane. The snow pea leaf dumpling once again used the large leaf variety, and the shrimp and avocado roll was pretty good. The real surprise was that Sam Woo's dim sum was the most expensive I had all day.

At this point in time I needed a respite so I drove to another hidden Chinese megamall in Markham and walked around for a while. At about 2:15 I figured it was time for one last selection of dim sum. I chose Casa Victoria in Markham, having previously been to their sister Casa Imperial for dinner, which had been the highlight meal of my previous trip to Toronto. The last dim sum of the day was clearly the best, with a selection of interesting and tasty items--lamb roll with cucumber and avocado in teriyaki sauce; duck with chive dumplings; chicken with black fungus dumplings; and crispy fried mashed potato cake with shrimp.

This trip reinforced my previous conclusion as to Toronto's place in the Chinese food pecking order, which is below Vancouver and above Los Angeles. The difference is that in Vancouver everything is clearly better than the food in Los Angeles. You can walk into any Chinese restaurant in Richmond, B.C. , even in a food court, and get a superior meal. In Toronto you will find food that is just as good as Vancouver, but you will also find food that is comparable to what we have here in Los Angeles. Last time I came back from Vancouver, I had no interest in eating L.A. Chinese food for over a month. Back in L.A. from Toronto last night, I'm going out for Chinese food today.

Does California Have An Anti-Business Climate?

This fall's Proposition 24 once again raises the issue of whether state government policies are so anti-business that they drive businesses out of the state. Proponents of the viewpoint say that between layers of regulation not present in other states, as well as tax policy, California is tangibly business unfriendly. The other camp says that California is such a population and economic center that businesses would be irrational to leave the state.

In reality both sides are correct to some extent and one might argue that there is really no way to determine who is right. However, I think there is in fact very strong evidence of which argument is correct, based on an examination of economic activity on both sides of the Colorado River dividing California and Arizona.

I remember crossing the Colorado River nearly 45 years ago on a family vacation where we drove from Los Angeles to Texas. I did not return to that area until just a short while ago. Stopping recently in the towns of Blythe and Needles, I was amazed how so little had changed in 45 years. No offense to the good citizens of these towns, but the California side of the Colorado River was depressing. The streets of these towns were not very busy and there had been very little in the way of new construction since the mid 60s. Small local retail businesses far outnumbered any chain stores. The California side of the river was lined with cheap motels and the entire path along the river was either undeveloped or in disrepair.

On the other hand, the Arizona side of the river was amazing. Fancy river side resorts. Tons of new construction. Nice shopping areas with major stores. Gasoline prices almost $1 a gallon cheaper than the California side. The differences between the California and Arizona sides of the river are what I imagine the contrast was when a visitor crossed from communist era East Germany over to West Germany. The California/Arizona border is the one area where businesses have a choice of whether to operate in California or outside of California, and it is clear that anybody who really has a choice will not operate in California.

So while it's obvious that major retailers won't abandon Los Angeles and San Francisco due to the sheer number of customers, there's no doubt that if given a viable alternative, a business will choose to operate somewhere other than California.

Chilean Miner Rescue

The rescue of the trapped Chilean miners is one of the great stories of our time. As the time for beginning the rescue approached I was hearing about the thought going into the order that the miners would be removed, the fact that they would be coming out one at a time, and that each miner would have to ride the rescue capsule for perhaps 15 or 20 minutes. I was struck by a random thought that waiting for all this to start was like waiting for the start of the NFL draft. Well apparently, I wasn't the only one to see the broad analogy. For once the rescue started, the CNN home page had a display showing numerically which miner was being rescued, and how long it had been since the current miner rescue started, e.g., miner #7 is 8 minutes and 24 seconds into his ascent. Did they include biographical info too? Just like the NFL draft countdown clock!

Me And New York

For somebody who set out a goal some 35 years ago of seeing the United States first and visiting every state, it took me a long time to get to New York. It wasn't until 1985 when I had probably visited 30 other states that I made my way there to teach a class. There are a couple of reasons why I actually avoided New York. Manhattan sounded like a dangerous place to visit--people were in fact being mugged in the subways and attacked in Central Park. Indeed, when relatives moved to Philadelphia in the 1970s and offered to take me there on a day trip while visiting them, I declined. Furthermore, having done the bulk of my traveling on fly and drive trips, the thought of driving in New York City was frightening. Indeed all my trepidations were proven true on my first trip to Manhattan, as the taxi taking us from JFK airport crossed over into the Manhattan side. Right after crossing the East River, the cabbie got into a dispute with a truck driver, a dispute so nasty that the cabbie stopped his vehicle, and got out of the car to jaw with the truck driver. Welcome to New York!

Five years later in 1990 I actually got up the nerve to drive into New York City, at the tail end of our two week fly and drive Canadian/East Coast trip. I made sure we arrived on Saturday, when traffic was lighter. It was a fun trip with our little kids in the back. Crossing the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey into Manhattan, I pointed out Grant's Tomb on the bluff overlooking the Hudson River. "Are we going to visit there?" asked Christina. "No, we're not" I responded. "That part of town is too dangerous." To which Eric thoughtfully inquired, "Oh. Is that how Grant died?" Yes, and they buried him on the spot.

As it turns out Manhattan wasn't that difficult of a place to drive if you followed certain rules. First of all, don't drive through Times Square, but rather go a few blocks out of your way to streets like West Highway. More importantly was don't drive like a polite Californian. Rather drive like the locals do, particularly the cabbies. Force your way into lane changes and through intersections. Indeed, I became fairly good at driving through Manhattan using these principles. When a colleague attending a training session with me on Long Island disclosed over dinner in Queens that he had never been to Manhattan, I immediately drove him over to Manhattan and gave him a tour of all the major sights. He was so impressed that when we got back he told everybody about the tour of Manhattan that I had given him.

However, it wasn't until 15 years after my first trip there that I discovered that it really didn't make any sense to drive in Manhattan. First of all the cost of overnight parking was ridiculous, and on top of that, it took forever for the parking attendant to get your car off of the storage ramp and out to you. Secondly, we discovered the New York subways. Now even in 2000 I was still greatly influenced by tales of crime in the subways, and since it made no sense to drive short distances in Manhattan, we opted to rely on taxi rides for those short trips. However, one evening after taking the cab to Manhattan Chinatown, we were going to return to Midtown when Mrs. Chandavkl pointed at the stairway going down to the subway station. Mrs. Chandavkl, who is many times more paranoid about crime and doom in general than I could ever be, said "Look at all those Chinese people going into the subway! It must be safe." This time I was the skeptical one, reluctantly following her down the tunnel. We got on the subway and the ride back to Midtown was wonderful--much faster and cheaper than a cab, and not a suspicious looking soul anywhere on the train. We turned in our rental car the next morning and it's been nothing but the subway ever since.

With numerous business trips to the east coast in the last few years, I've explored transportation alternatives I never would have dreamed of. Take the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan from the outskirts? Sounds interesting, but I had never taken a domestic train ride anywhere in the US. But it wasn't much harder than catching the subway from Flushing to Manhattan. There's an Amtrak commuter train between Washington DC and Penn Station in New York? Again, sounds interesting, but how do you buy your ticket, how do you find your track, where are you supposed to sit? Well, two years ago I finally booked the train. Amazingly, arriving at the ticket counter just 10 minutes before an earlier train was about to leave, I was able to switch to the earlier ride in time. Arriving at Penn Station, fortuituosly my randomly booked hotel was just a couple of blocks away. The next time I rode the Amtrak from DC to NY I got more adventurous, booking a hotel in Chinatown, requiring a subway ride not originating from Penn Station. While I had actually taken the subway from Manhattan to JFK airport once before, it was with a lesser amount of luggage, but somehow I managed my way on the stairs through the turnstiles into and out of the subway station.

Which leads me to my next potential adventure in traversing New York City. When travelling back from Washington DC to New York, I need to make a choice of whether to stop overnight in Manhattan or in Flushing. Both are very interesting places, but staying in Manhattan entails taking the Amtrak train and its three hour ride, while Flushing is a short plane ride from Reagan Airport to LaGuardia. Now you can do both Flushing and Manhattan at the same time since there is the 7 subway train, but that can take 45 minutes to more than an hour each way. Also while I did ride the Long Island Railroad from Flushing to Manhattan once, that service is not as frequent as the subway and it only gets you to Penn Station. But I recently found that hitting both Manhattan and Flushing on the way back is a possibility due to the Chinese bus service between Manhattan Chinatown and Flushing Chinatown. While I have heard about the legendary Chinese buses for many years, I've never ridden one since there are several issues. For one thing, there is no "Chinatown Bus Station" at either end. The buses pick up and drop off their passengers on the street, from buses marked only in Chinese. Also, there is no set schedule. A bus won't leave until it's full. Supposedly the buses fill up quickly, so the wait shouldn't be that long. Indeed, I suspect the buses run a circuit like the Disneyland parking lot tram rides. But the attraction is that for the $2.50 bus fare, you can travel between Flushing and Manhattan Chinatown in roughly 20 minutes. Will I be able to find the Chinatown bus? We'll have to wait until next year to see.

The Value of Senior Leadership

One of the truisms of college sports is that senior leadership can be a decisive factor in the success of a team. This topic in turns raises the oft debated issue as to the relative importance of raw talent and experience, where a choice must be made between the two. We're on the brink of getting an interesting answer to the debate as UCLA's football season is about to begin.

Two years ago, UCLA had one of the most ineffective offensive lines in the school's history, and once of the worst in Division I football that year. It was so bad that not only did one of the starters not have much talent (a lightly recruited two star player out of high school), but he played most of the season with a separated shoulder. Last year's offensive line, while still below average, was a great improvement over 2008, and the prospects for 2010 looked even better. However, due to a series of unfortunate events, UCLA faces the prospect of a starting offensive line consisting of players who cumulatively started fewer than 10 games in 2009. Oh, and all five of these starters are seniors.

So what we have is a starting lineup of inexperienced seniors. How will this play out? Will their senior leadership raise the group's performance to unexpected heights, or does the lack of prior starting experience mean this is an untalented group that will have little success?

Looking at the cogs of the wheel, perhaps the key player is Micah Kia. Highly recruited out of Hawaii, Kia played extensively as a true freshman in 2006, but seemed to underachieve in his next two years as a part time starter. An injury kept him out for all of 2009, and if anybody could have a breakout year, it would be Kia. Fellow starter on the 2008 line Darius Savage was tabbed by Coach Neuheisel as having pro potential, but by 2009 had dropped to third string without showing a hint of his promise. Out of the same recruiting class is another four star prospect, Sean Sheller who had been projected as a starter in 2008 but had his season wiped out by a preseason ATV accident, and is only now getting back into shape as a fifth year senior with almost no playing experience. Eddie Williams, a JC transfer, started six games in 2009 before breaking his leg. And Ryan Taylor, another JC transfer (who had originally signed with Texas A&M-Kingsville--not the real Texas A & M) who replaced Williams after he went down, rounds out the starting five.

Daily News writer Jon Gold has been slightly encouraging regarding this group, reporting that they seem to be doing surprisingly well. They work well as a unit, which would be attributable to their years of experience. We'll see very soon how effective they will be.

Your Government Inaction, Parts XXXV and XXXVI

I can't say that anything about inefficiency in government surprises me any more, but I've heard about a couple of more blood boiling episodes. First of all, the Iowa egg salmonella outbreak demonstrates once again that too many cooks spoil the broth. What is the government agency that oversees the processing and sale of eggs? The answer is, it depends based on whether the egg has been processed or not. If the eggs are not yet processed they're under the purview of the Agriculture department. After processing, it's the Food and Drug Administration in charge. As you know, the USDA focuses on things like grading agricultural products, so with eggs they're only concerned with the physical attributes of the egg and it's not their job to determine if the product is safe. That part falls on the FDA. Did anybody consider the fact that it might make sense for one agency to be in charge of eggs from the moment they're laid? Apparently not.

The next example involves the retail space near the southwest corner of Sunset and Western in Los Angeles. This was formerly home to Farm Fresh, a gem of a supermarket specializing in produce. They lost their lease and word was that a new Target store would be built there, not a bad exchange since that would be very convenient for us. Except that it's been a couple of years and nothing has been done with that space. Now word has leaked out as to what the hold up is. It seems like this retail site is in some kind of special district where the city of Los Angeles has mandated that any large operator has to provide free delivery service for their customers, something which Target is unwilling to do. Why, pray tell, is such a requirement imposed? Well, to permit people who ride bicycles or take public transit to the store to be able to purchase large items! Now nobody walks in L.A., and they don't bike or take public transit either. It is commendable to try to encourage people to do so, but to stop Target from opening up because you would like to encourage alternative means of getting to the retail site is lunacy. Indeed, this ranks right up there with Los Angeles city planners who deliberately did not provide parking space along Metrorail subway stops, because they wanted people to take connecting public transit to the subway instead of driving there. Naturally, as a result people have chosen not to take connecting public transit and not use the subway. Doesn't government ever learn? (Obviously not.)