Ice Cream & Cake

Monday, July 16, 2018

I received unwarranted attention this weekend.  Yesterday was National Ice Cream Day and people asked me (well, one person) how was I celebrating.  Would I take advantage of the special offers ballyhooed by several businesses?  In fact, I had no ice cream all day, partially because of a good, but hurried late dinner at Bengal Tiger Indian Restaurant, 58 West 56th Street, lamb biryani ($17) distinguished by the large portion size and the tenderness of the lamb.  

 

However, even if time allowed, the special offers were not really that special.  Typically, Dairy Queen, Baskin-Robbins, Carvel and Cold Stone Creamery were offering buy-one-get-one-free.  Whole Foods was selling pints of Ben & Jerry's and Talenti Gelato at 2 for $6, a good deal, if not a great deal, one worth pursuing, but not one that I could pursue, because our freezer already held two pints of Ben & Jerry's, our household's legal limit under the terms of our pre-nuptial agreement.  

 

Another reason that I was unhesitant about not observing National Ice Cream Day was, according to the terms of the public law signed by President Ronald Reagan on July 9, 1984, while National Ice Cream Day was to be July 15th, henceforth, July was to be National Ice Cream Month.  So, I still have plenty of time to indulge, and you do, too.

. . .

 

Dean Alfange, Jr., retired from teaching American constitutional law at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, after more than 40 years.  Nate Persily is in his second decade of teaching it, now at Stanford University.  I don't presume to approach the subject with their range and depth, but I have something to say, contrasting two recent controversial Supreme Court cases.

 

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission deals with the Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.  The United States Supreme Court did not affirm his right to deny his services on the basis of his religious convictions.  That issue was allowed to slip by.  Instead, the court found that, in its deliberations, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission disparaged the baker’s sincerely held religious views, thereby violating his First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.  So, the commission's actual decision succumbed to the perceived attitude underlying the decision making process.

 

Next up, Trump v. Hawaii, addressing the Muslim travel ban.  The U.S. Solicitor General, arguing for the administration, recognized the danger of his master's voice when he contended, in oral argument, that "campaign statements are made by a private citizen . . . [and] those statements should be out of bounds."  He ignored the rhetoric that flowed from the unpopularly-elected candidate once he took office.  According to The New York Times, this was good enough for "the court’s conservatives [who] said that the president’s power to secure the country’s borders, delegated by Congress over decades of immigration lawmaking, was not undermined by Mr. Trump’s history of incendiary statements about the dangers he said Muslims pose to the United States.”  The court proclaimed that, to the contrary, "Given the clarity of the text [that allows the President to control immigration], we need not consider such extra-textual evidence."  

It's nice to know that the court's Strict Constructionists (not to be confused with Jewish Reconstructionists) are able to find wiggle room for Christians, at least.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Last week, I forwarded a list of newish Chinese restaurants in the East Village/lower East Side. 
http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/07/the-best-cheap-eats-in-the-east-villages-chinatown-north.html 

Most were unfamiliar to me, but the list came from Grub Street, a generally reliable source of restaurant recommendations.  Therefore, I set out today to start filling the information gap and went to The Bao, 13 St. Marks Place, once the Main Street of the East Coast's counterculture.  There are still head shops, now extended to vaping, and tattoo parlors.  There are also a bunch of interesting little eating joints, including Mamoun's Falafel, 30 St. Marks Place, reputedly serving the best falafel in town.  But, even if the street were otherwise empty, The Bao would be a worthwhile destination.

The near-square room is fairly stark.  One wall is exposed brick, the opposite covered in large rectangles of dark gray cloth, looking like concrete slabs at a distance.  Suspended parallel to the ceiling are dozens of six-foot lengths of downspouts, coated with terra cotta paint.  Don't ask me why.

About 50 people occupied almost every seat and I had to wait until a group of 13 got up from the big table at the center of the room.  I skipped the dozen lunch specials at $9.50, main courses usually priced at $12.95 to $15.95, and went right to the eponymous bao.  I ordered the Kung Fu Xiao Long Bao (6 for $8.95), an excellent rendition of the classic soup dumpling.  I can't recall better.  My second course was a scallion pancake with sliced beef ($9.95), also a big hit.  The scallion pancake was crispy and thin, closer to a crêpe than a pancake, wrapped around beef dressed with hoisin sauce.

My only regret was eating alone, not able to use the presence of another person as an excuse to sample many more things on the menu.

Thursday, July 19, 2018
I had lunch with Mossad Moshe today at Humus Place, 305 Amsterdam Avenue, chosen to avoid culture shock for him.  And, I must say that the humus was silky smooth. It was a side dish to an excellent shakshuka, eggs cooked in a pan of ratatouille ($15 with cheese, $14 without).  It was hard to choose what to do with the fresh pita bread, dip it in the humus or the shakshuka.

Politics at the table were even more challenging.  Was the right wing nationalism controlling the Israeli government worse than the one controlling the American government?  We shared dismay at the news of the new Israeli "basic law," declaring the right of national self-determination in Israel as “unique to the Jewish people” — not to all of its citizens.  https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-passes-controversial-nation-state-bill-1.6291048

This converts the de facto second-class citizenship of Israeli Arabs into de jure status.  Did the machismo of Bibi Netanyahu's right-wing constituents need reinforcement?  Was a diversion needed from the mounting criminal investigations of Bibi and his wife?  Was Bibi envious of all the attention the American president is getting for the wrong reasons?
. . .

I have defended the admission process to Stuyvesant High School, relying entirely on a single test, although it has produced racially skewed results.  I don't believe that there is a method of populating the school that would be recognized as fair by all (make that most) interested parties.  Even the definition of fair might cause a never-ending debate.

My stand is based on the presumption that the dispositive test is carefully crafted to avoid bias, providing the proverbial level playing field.  However, a story in The New York Times casts some doubt on the utility of the test, not necessarily any tilt in its design, conscious or unconscious.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/nyregion/shsat-new-york-city-schools.html

The article states that the test has not undergone "predictive validity testing, which provides statistical evidence that a test is actually doing what it claims to do."  This results, according to one expert, in a test that is "just a self-contained evaluation to see who does well on the test,” unconnected to the goal of selecting the best and the brightest.

I still believe in a test, because I believe in selecting the best and the brightest.  It's the students who make the school, after all.  In my experience, competition is a good thing, a performance stimulant.  I'm afraid that's my Brooklyn roots showing and I have found no reason to abandon them.  The world isn't better than Brooklyn.  Relax later.

I still believe in a test.  Can we find the right one?