Category: Travel
Is technology driving us apart? And are there more women in public spaces?
It seems the answer is no. There is an interesting new NYT piece by Mark Oppenheimer, here is one excerpt:
Hampton found that, rather than isolating people, technology made them more connected. “It turns out the wired folk — they recognized like three times as many of their neighbors when asked,” Hampton said. Not only that, he said, they spoke with neighbors on the phone five times as often and attended more community events. Altogether, they were much more successful at addressing local problems, like speeding cars and a small spate of burglaries. They also used their Listserv to coordinate offline events, even sign-ups for a bowling league. Hampton was one of the first scholars to marshal evidence that the web might make people less atomized rather than more. Not only were people not opting out of bowling leagues — Robert Putnam’s famous metric for community engagement — for more screen time; they were also using their computers to opt in.
And:
According to Hampton, our tendency to interact with others in public has, if anything, improved since the ‘70s. The P.P.S. films showed that in 1979 about 32 percent of those visited the steps of the Met were alone; in 2010, only 24 percent were alone in the same spot.
And finally:
…this was Hampton’s most surprising finding: Today there are just a lot more women in public, proportional to men. It’s not just on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. On the steps of the Met, the proportion of women increased by 33 percent, and in Bryant Park by 18 percent. The only place women decreased proportionally was in Boston’s Downtown Crossing — a major shopping area. “The decline of women within this setting could be interpreted as a shift in gender roles,” Hampton writes. Men seem to be “taking on an activity that was traditionally regarded as feminine.”
Across the board, Hampton found that the story of public spaces in the last 30 years has not been aloneness, or digital distraction, but gender equity. “I mean, who would’ve thought that, in America, 30 years ago, women were not in public the same way they are now?” Hampton said. “We don’t think about that.”
The piece is interesting throughout.
Will your next car Google you?
Cecilia Kang and Michael Fletcher have a new article with a variety of interesting observations, here are some bits:
A tablet, running Google’s Android operating system, will pop out of the dashboard. The device can be passed around so passengers can find YouTube clips and order songs and audio books from the Google Play store for the car’s entertainment system.
Prefer Dunkin’ Donuts over Starbucks? Google may be able to decipher that by driving behavior and deliver the appropriate ads to an e-mail account or smartphone.
…The executives added that Google, not the automaker, would control any personal data generated by the car. And, they said, the information would be stored in servers, not the actual vehicles, to safeguard the data in case the car is stolen or sold.
…Much of the data that Web-connected cars generate may seem mundane — the route someone takes to work, where they are at a certain time, whether their car needs a tire alignment or more coolant — but they can be lucrative to companies in the business of closely targeted marketing.
“If you are a business that provides services to someone in that car, you have a captive audience for an hour a day,” Smith said. “Think about how much anybody would like to have a captive marketing audience for an hour a day. It is a gold mine.”
Much of the new discussion concerns new Audis, but of course such innovations may spread to other cars as well. Ads emanating from the car radio are old news, so what other mechanisms of ad delivery will be found? And will drivers be lured with free services (which?) for being willing to hear or view or smell such ads? I miss the old days of the open window and the eight-track tape.
If they designed a hotel to please me (hotels for infovores)
I am enjoying the “new David Brooks” and his last column prompted me to consider what I actually look for in a hotel. It is pretty quirky and it involves:
1. Very flat pillows so the head can lie almost flat.
2. No fawning from service people.
3. Numerous ready to access electrical outlets, including a laptop outlet right next to the bed so I can lean up against the pillow while blogging.
4. A non-ventilated bathroom which allows you to steam clothes into submission, and clothes hangars which support the same.
6. NBA-relevant channels on the TV and an easy to operate remote control system which does not trap said user in irrelevant menus.
7. Good breakfast choices which do not have an excess of carbohydrates.
I am putting aside location and obvious matters such as “they don’t torture me with unscheduled wake-up calls at 4 a.m.” In any case, it is easy for an expensive hotel — boutique or not — to fail on most of those grounds.
Uber-Economist
Uber is hiring economists. Looks like an interesting job:
Urban transportation has looked the same for a long time – a really long time – thanks in large part to regulatory regimes that don’t encourage innovation. We think it’s time for change. We’re a tech company sure, and we’re working in the transportation space, but at the end of the day we’re disrupting very old business models. Our Public Policy team prefers winning by being right over some of the darker lobbying arts, and so we’re looking for a Policy Economist to tease smart answers to hard questions out of big data. How do the old transportation business models impact driver income? What effect if any is Uber having on the housing market or drunk driving or public transit? To what extent are the different policy regimes in New York City and Taipei responsible for different transportation outcomes? Just a few of the questions we want you to dig on.
Another Obamacare glitch
Stella Paul reports:
Millions are losing their health insurance policies and being forced onto the ObamaCare exchanges, where most plans only provide local medical coverage. As Americans realize they must pay for all non-emergency medical care when they leave their home county.
The pointer is from Arnold Kling.
Central Planning for Parking
Central planning is everywhere discredited except for central planning of parking places in American cities. Here from an excellent post is Matt Yglesias.
Are members of the Rockville, Maryland Town Council experts in real estate development? In parking management? Are they putting their own money on the line in the success or failure of projects in the center of their town? Of course not! Nonetheless:
Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton said she attended the Christmas tree lighting recently and was unable to find a parking space in Town Center. Councilman Tom Moore said he would like to get a briefing on Town Center parking from city staff before making a decision.
And:
Councilwoman Virginia Onley said the proposed parking reduction was her biggest concern with Duball’s plan. In Petworth, she said, some apartment residents have a Safeway downstairs. In Rockville, Town Center residents have to get in their cars to go to Safeway.
Suppose other kind of business decisions were made this way. Maybe someone wants to open a burger joint in Rockville, but he doesn’t want to serve milkshakes. One councilman says the last time he wanted to get a milkshake there was a very long line, so obviously the new burger place must serve milkshakes. Another councilman protests that he doesn’t even like burgers. Aren’t more people vegetarians these days?
Market forces aren’t good at everything. But striking a balance between the demand for some service (parking) and the cost (including opportunity costs) of providing it, is exactly what market forces are good at. And yet somehow when it comes to parking spaces no politician in America is radical enough to suggest that the solution is to build as much parking as people want to pay for.
Tyler Cowen’s West Bank ethnic dining guide
I can recommend two places:
1. Siri (that is how they pronounced it, I don’t know the transliteration), a small restaurant on one of the main streets in the center of Ramallah.
They serve hummus, foul, and foul ringed with hummus, get the latter. The accompanying vegetables were more strongly marinated than they typically would be in Israel, a plus in my view.
2. Laymoon [The Lemon restaurant], Ariha (Jericho)
The chicken musakhan, with piles of red onions and slivered nuts over bread, seasoned with generous doses of sumac and allspice, is very tasty. The restaurant is also a nice place to sit outside and enjoy the weather, or to catch an Arabic-language film on their large outdoor screen.
I walked by many other places and in general they looked good. The various fruits I purchased on the street were all winners, the small oranges and the dates most of all. There is much less variety, but dish by dish my impression from a small sample was that the food in West Bank cities is slightly better than that of Tel Aviv.
Ariha was attracting a lot of Nigerian church tourism.
Overall I noticed how much economic growth and globalized advertising were to be seen in Ramallah. My biggest surprise was how much being in Ramallah felt like…being in Israel. Except the citizenry seemed less religious.
Singapore bleg for Yana
Daughter Yana (“Dotchka”), who is almost 24, will visit Singapore (!) for the first time in the second half of December, flying from her current abode in India. What do you recommend she do and see there? When it comes to the social and economic dimension, she is interested in market urbanism, economics of infrastructure, Jane Jacobs and Adam Smith, health care management, and civil society more generally, not to mention historical narratives on the regularization of goods and services delivery toward cheapness and reliability. She has had a good meal or two as well.
Both she and I thank you in advance for any guidance you are able to offer.
The culture that was Singapore (Haw Par Villa)
It has its gruesome side, as illustrated by this look at a traditional site for visits, Haw Par Villa:
Thousands used to throng the park, and it once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with attractions like Singapore Zoo and Jurong Bird Park. “Every Singaporean over the age of 35 probably has a picture of themselves at Haw Par,” said Desmond Sim, a local playwright. Those pictures would probably include the following statues, each made from plastered cement paste and wire mesh: a human head on the body of a crab, a frog in a baseball cap riding an ostrich, and a grandmother suckling at the breast of another woman.
But the highlight of this bizarre park are the Ten Courts. A tableau of severe disciplines are shown in painstaking detail, along with a placard stating the sin that warranted it. Tax dodgers are pounded by a stone mallet, spikes driven into a skeletal chest cavity like a bloodthirsty pestle in mortar. Spot the tiny tongue as it is pulled out of a screaming man, watch the demon flinging a young girl into a hill of knives. Ungratefulness results in a blunt metal rod cutting a very large, fleshly heart out of a woman. Perhaps the most gruesome depiction is an executioner pulling tiny intestines out from a man tied to a pole. The colons were visible and brown. The crime? Cheating during exams.
The park may be closing down, with few remaining attendees, though from the article it seems you still can go. Hurry up.
You can read TripAdvisor reviews of the park here. Here is Wikipedia on the park. Here are Flickr images. There are further sources here.
Are these the cultural preconditions of capitalism and good governance? I know which of my colleagues will be most happy to read about this.
A life well-lived
This is from the obituary of economist Alexander L. Morton:
At 42, Mr. Morton was well on pace in the ascension of his chosen career ladder. He had a doctorate in economics from Harvard, had taught at the Harvard Business School and was finishing a four-year assignment as director the office of policy and analysis at the Interstate Commerce Commission.
He then quit.
He had made enough money in real estate deals and investments to guarantee an independent income for himself. For his remaining 28 years, he was almost constantly on the move, visiting dozens of countries and often going off the expected paths from Western travelers.
And this:
He rarely spoke about himself and never discussed in detail his reasons for retiring in mid-career as an economist to pursue a life of travel. But his sister said he was ready for a change, had the savings to and had done as much as he wished to in the field of transportation deregulation.
To continue along the same path, would have been a case of “been there, done that,” she said.
Here is Alex’s earlier post on traveling more. Maybe Alexander L. Morton had some really good lunch partners.
Mt. Kisco, New York dining bleg
That’s Westchester County, right? I will have time for one meal there, before a trip to IBM Watson. Where should I eat?
The Travel Arbitrage Challenge
Chris, a loyal reader (natch), poses the following challenge. He is planning to travel, perhaps to Venezuela, but other countries are open. He’d like to profit from an arbitrage opportunity which could be due to official and un-official exchange rates or it could be a goods-based arbitrage. At one point, for example, you could do quite well bringing condoms to Russia but no longer. Nothing illegal especially on the import side or nothing too illegal. I get the feeling he would go for bringing in Cuban cigars if that were his best bet.
Thus, MR readers, the challenge. What country and what arbitrage?
As for me, I always eat well and get a haircut when I’m in a poor country (thanks Bela Balassa) but that arbitrage won’t pay for the trip. Can you do better?
My longstanding quest for the ideal bibimbap
Since the mid nineties I have been looking for a bibimbap that would stand above all others. A year ago I found it in Seoul, and yesterday I retraced my steps and visited again.
As I entered, the woman in charge appeared to recognize me and gave me a stoic look of “Oh, you again.”
This is vegetarian bibimbap, with egg, and you need to shake your lunch box many times. She will do it for you. They also serve a superb bean sprout and seaweed and rice noodle soup, and if that description doesn’t excite you, you need to get to Korea as soon as possible.
As a sideline, they sell Korean antique furniture out of the side room.
It is very close to Changdeokgung palace area, up the nearby street (first pass the Hyundai Cultural Center) with lots of shops and restaurants and old Korean roofs. French people walk there. I was told by another customer that the address was Jongro Gaedong 44, but on the other side of the street I saw the numbers 91 and 93, in any case this building is just short of The Cup Story and Uncle’s Bob stores. (02) 744-8130 and 010-9942-9967 are given on the business card.
It is worth visiting Seoul to eat this woman’s food.
And after you finish, it is about a ten minute walk to the Institute of Traditional Korean Food, where they have an excellent rice cake museum.
The new Elizabeth Gilbert book and what makes for an ideal read on a long plane flight?
It’s good — really — and it is called The Signature of All Things. I also find the book was nearly ideal for a long plane flight. It has enough ideas to keep one’s interest, as I find that truly schlocky fiction bores me after a short while (it is better for short flights than for long ones). But it is also easy enough to read and the print is suitably large.
Which other books do you find to be ideal for long plane flights?
Are gas station restaurants the future of cuisine? Or is cuisine the future of gas stations?
Gas stations have not historically inspired confidence as palate pleasers. Day-old (or longer) doughnuts or hot dogs rolling (and rolling) on a spinner grill come to mind. But across the Washington region, there are at least a dozen eateries serving delectable, sometimes organic, fare near the pump. There’s Korean bibimbap in Wheaton, authentic Mexican in Jessup, Thai in Leesburg and Latin American in the District. Corned Beef King cooks its meat for 11 hours.
And here are the economics:
The chefs and dreamers have found willing partners in gas station owners. Some have volunteered to cover the cost of building kitchens to tap new sources of revenue — from rent and increased foot traffic — as the margins on gas sales shrink even furtherand retailers such as Best Buy encroach on their quick-bite turf by stocking soda and snacks at the register.
Here is much more, from Michael Rosenwald.