Category: Travels

Mobile, Alabama bleg

by  Tyler Cowen in

I'll be there soon and I'll have a free day — maybe even a day and a half — and I'm wondering what to do.  For all the talk about markets in everything, I can't find a good guide book on Alabama.  This worries me only a little.  There is Alabama Off the Beaten Path but first I would like to know the path.  Your suggestions are very much welcome and since they are coming in an intellectual vacuum they will have even more influence than usual.  (Imagine handing Road to Serfdom to a thirteen-year-old.)  What and where does one eat?  I'll also be driving on to a talk in Biloxi, in case you know of anything interesting, or any good food, on the Mobile-Biloxi route.

I am, in fact, very excited to be visiting Mobile for the first time.

Food in Portugal notes

by  Tyler Cowen in

Many of you recommended the pasteis in Belem, so when we were picked up at the airport we were immediately whisked there: "We know already that you wish to go" was the explanation.   

The white asparagus is in season and they stack ham on top of many things, including trout.  No other cuisine can make the blend of rabbit and clam seem so natural.  A good rule of thumb here is to order game, beans, and any combination of ingredients which sounds like a mistake.  The biggest mistake here is to try to replicate the kind of seafood meal you might enjoy in the U.S.

If you prefer Michelin "two-fork restaurants" to their starred alternatives, Portugal is the eating country for you.  I haven't seen a single Chinese restaurant.  It is Lusaphone eating: for your foreign options, you can find Brazilian, Mozambiquean (good chicken), Cape Verdean, and excellent Goan.  French and Italian are rare.

If I had a thousand dissertations to research, one of them would be: "The historical interconnections between the Portuguese dessert and the Calcutta sweets shop."

The fact that I found this post interesting to write makes me fear that Western Europe is not yet an optimum currency area.

Tabarrok at TED

by  Alex Tabarrok in

I will be speaking on The Future of Economic Growth at this year's legendary TED Conference, TED 2009, which takes place in Long Beach, Feb 3-7.  Other speakers include Tim Berners-Lee, Oliver Sacks, Daniel Lebeskind, Herbie Hancock and Bill Gates.  In my session, I am paired with Nate Silver, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and Dan Ariely.  Yeah, I'm a little nervous.  Fortunately, TED provides a masseuse for speakers before they hit the stage!  I kid you not. 

Why haven’t I been to Portugal yet?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Nick, a loyal MR reader, asks:

Well, Portugal is one place I’ve never visited – and I
believe you’ve never been there; why is that? As a gormand &
traveller it appears to have everything – influencing the world’s
cuisine (from Japan to Brazil & back) & with a beautiful,
unique (if rather mournful) musical cannon… Is there a reason you’ve
never been to Portugal? 

The first reason is intertemporal substitution, namely that I often wait for people to pay me to go places.  In general this factor leads small countries, especially with Romance languages, or in geographic corners, to be visited late.  The small country has a bigger place in your mind’s eye than it does on the conference and lecture circuit.  The American Midwest ends up being overvisited, as does New Orleans, and Nova Scotia ends up being undervisited (I want very much to go there). 

If you are invited to a lot of talks and conferences, your non-work travel should avoid centrally located hub cities and focus on poor corners, such as Albania and Yemen.  You’ll get to Paris and London anyway.

That said, I have an invitation to Portugal for this April and I will be going.  Since I’m not sure I need to go twice, I am glad I waited.

Claims about Africa

by  Tyler Cowen in

The conversation confirmed an opinion that has crystallised over the
past few years: if, as a westerner, you are going to visit Africa, the
earlier in your life you do it, the better. By the time you are in your
twenties, your head is so stuffed with preconceived opinions, mostly of
the ethically self-flagellating variety, you can barely see, let alone
interpret, what is going on outside you.

Here is the link, courtesy of www.bookforum.com.  I am interested in the claim that there is an optimal time in one’s life to travel.  Many people do not get to travel much until their children leave the house.  But when are the cognitive returns to travel the highest?  I believe one must first know some theory before travelling — perhaps even some false theory — otherwise the travel does not come as a sufficient shock.  In other words, the more you read and ponder social reality, the lower is your optimal cognitive age for travel.

Now is the Time for the Buffalo Commons

by  Alex Tabarrok in

The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming.  See the map for more.  It is time for a sale.  Selling even some western land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars – perhaps trillions of dollars – for the Federal government at a time when the funds are badly needed and no one want to raise taxes.  At the same time, a sale of western land would improve the efficiency of land allocation.

Mapowns_the_west

Does a sale of western lands mean reducing national parkland?  No, first much of the land isn’t parkland.  Second, I propose a deal.  The government should sell some of its most valuable land in the west and use some of the proceeds to buy low-price land in the Great Plains. 

The western Great Plains are emptying of people.  Some 322 of the 443 Plains counties have lost population since 1930 and a majority have lost population since 1990. 

Now is the time for the Federal government to sell high-priced land in the West, use some of the proceeds to deal with current problems and use some of the proceeds to buy low-priced land in the Plains creating the world’s largest nature park, The Buffalo Commons.

Hat tip to Carl Close for the pointer to the map.

I’ve never traveled with Alex before

by  Tyler Cowen in

Until now, that is.  We’re even in a country with a partially nationalized banking system.

The headline from yesterday’s Daily Mail is scary: "It’s outrageous that banks demand taxpayers’ money yet impose 15 pc interest rates on small businesses."  The article then outlines the high interest rates that borrowers have to pay.

I guess more easy credit is what we need and nationalization is the way to get there.  If I can believe this morning’s headline, the United States may be headed to the same place.  Remember all that junk — like the subsidy for small arrows — that they ended up sticking into the Paulson plan?

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Jetman

by  Alex Tabarrok in

What we need today is a superhero.  Thus, I give you Jetman.

Fly385_404109pSwiss adventurer Yves Rossy flew from England to France Friday
propelled by a jetpack strapped to his back — the first person to
cross the English Channel in such a way.

Rossy, a pilot who normally flies an Airbus airliner, crossed the 22
miles between Calais and Dover at speeds of up to 120 mph in 13
minutes, his spokesman said.

Quoted here.  More pictures here.

And Now for Something Completely Different

by  Alex Tabarrok in
  • Philosopher Saul Smilansky says his work is a cross between Kant and Monty Python. I’m not sure I’d go that far but I enjoyed hearing Smilansky and Will Wilkinson on blogginheadstv.  I discussed Smilansky’s paradox of retirement argument earlier.  He is now out with a book, Ten Moral Paradoxes.
  • The Sarah Connor Chronicles doesn’t get any respect but I thought the first season was great in an action-packed, edge-of-your seat, thrill-seeking sort of way.  The second season has just begun.  Summer Glau plays the Spock/Data learning-to-be-human cyborg that John Connor can’t admit he wants to interface with.

Mean and Lowly Things

by  Tyler Cowen in

The two Pygmies persuaded to work for me have reputations as the worst guides in the village.  Their cooking often includes rotting fish, which they serve cold for breakfast if I don’t finish it at dinner.  They are supposed to do my laundry, but they find women’s underwear too embarrassing to contemplate.  They won’t go out after dark, and they consider wading in the swamp to be absolute folly.  So I’m almost late one night when I fall over a log and scrape my left leg, on my way back from the swamp with a bag of treefrogs.

I think nothing of the scrape until 5 days later, when my temperature shoots to 104F and my leg swells and turns red.  Some microbe from the swamp has entered through the scrape and spread to infect my whole body.  Perhaps the Pygmies had some sense in refusing to wade in the swamp.

That is from Kate Jackson’s Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science and Survival in the Congo.  It is an excellent and very fun book on fieldwork and on the topics mentioned in its subtitle.  I think of this as "a Chris Blattman book" and yes you should be reading Chris’s blog.