Results for “best book” 1833 found
My media secrets
I’m not going to cite "the usual sources," most (all?) of which I read, so please don’t be offended if you write for them or edit them. When it comes to media, I also love the following:
1. Entertainment Weekly; I devour it immediately upon arrival, there is no periodical I look forward to more. I often disagree with their reviews, but I can always interpret the bottom line. The coverage of good TV is without peer.
2. Fanfare, reviews of classical music, the reviewers maintain an impossibly high standard. I read it the night it arrives, and I click on Amazon to get what I want, end of story.
3. New York magazine; it has proved itself consistently interesting, and I don’t even live in New York.
4. The modern love column for The Sunday New York Times; here is one example. I read it closely every week. I just ordered the book.
5. The marriage announcements in The Sunday New York Times. I only read a few each week, but they keep my perspective real, albeit totally skewed toward the upper classes; the combination with the photo is essential. To the extent that this is the real news in a given day, our world is a healthy place.
6. Variety magazine by far the best movie reviews. Unlike newspapers, they don’t confuse how good the movie is with how popular it will be. Expensive but worth it, plus the foreign coverage is first-rate.
7. The Art Newspaper, all the news in the world of museums, auctions, antiquities law, art fairs, and exhibits. It is written at a very high intellectual level.
What am I missing? I don’t find Spin that useful any more, World Beat has stopped arriving, then there are the science magazines, Discover and SA are favorites.
Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them
That is the title of this new book by Philippe Legrain, and no I don’t know how you can buy it outside the UK. Legrain is also the author of the excellent Open World, a defense of economic globalization.
This work is the single best non-technical defense of a liberal immigration policy. What I liked most was how
it put U.S. debates in a broader context; most American sources don’t
do this. For instance how normal or extreme is the American experience
compared to other histories of absorbing immigrants? The book is original in this regard, yet without moving beyond easily
understood arguments.
I do understand the
concerns raised by Steve Sailer and others against immigrants, and I
readily grant that the idea of open borders is a non-starter. But is
the United States today in a position where Latino immigrants are
tearing us apart? I think not.
Yes I know your anecdotes, but here is what it would
take to budge me. Do a study of real estate prices in San Diego, Santa
Ana (a largely Mexican part of Orange County), and the relevant
sections of Houston, among other locales. Show me that real estate values in those areas
are falling or even plummeting, and yes I do mean in absolute terms and
no the recent collapse of the real estate bubble doesn’t count. Then I’ll
give the issue another look. Otherwise the worst I am going to believe is that "things are not getting better as rapidly as they might otherwise be," and that, whether or not you like such a possible state of affairs, does not represent the sky falling.
But for purposes of balance, here is the most anti-immigration post I have written. Here is an interesting recent paper on migration.
Addendum: Here is a good article on immigrant entrepreneurs.
Dr. Neruda’s Cure for Evil
I’ve loved Rafael Yglesias’s book Dr. Neruda’s Cure for Evil for about ten years, but only Friday, when browsing in the library, did it occur to (silly) me it was also The Best Novel By A Father of A Major Blogger.
The story, told by literary flashback, turns around a doctor who encourages his patients to relive their childhood traumas but goes one step or more too far. One review: "Entertaining, thought-provoking, shocking, enlightening, puzzling, this fascinating work
tackles many issues such as incest, insanity, the nature of love, the drive for power,
religious, business and political creeds, therapeutic ethics — and, of course, what (or who)
is evil."
Somehow, unjustly, the book never captured the "For Smart People Who Are Looking for Conceptual Yet Fun Fiction Along the Lines of Byatt, Eco, and Calvino" slot that grabs so many readers. It seems largely forgotten.
By the way, here is the son’s post on government contracting. Here is yet another generation up.
Sappy thoughts
For my forty-fifth birthday we ate brunch at a now-in-slight-decline Bob’s Noodle 66, saw the excellent Pan’s Labyrinth, and I slow-cooked a Chinese lamb casserole for dinner. My presents included a snow brush to clear the car — which I needed today –, a CD of electric guitar desert music from Niger, and Neuberger dark chocolate from Sao Tome.
I am not close to starting Civilization IV, I am slowly reading through the works of Roberto Bolaño, watching Monty Python on YouTube with Yana, and interviewing four job candidates in the next week and a half.
I am continually reminded what wonderful readers Alex and I have — one of the best such groups in the world — and we thank you for visiting the blog and making our lives richer.
I am already grateful for what the next year will bring, and now to ponder tomorrow’s posts…
Would cocaine legalization help Colombia?
Alvaro Vargas Llosa says yes:
In a country that has made admirable progress on other fronts, the drug
war is preventing the government from finishing off the narco-terrorist
organizations. Between 2002 and 2005, Uribe’s “democratic security”
policy successfully pushed those organizations, especially the Marxist
empire known as FARC, away from many cities. There was a one-third drop
in the number of murders and a two-thirds drop in the number of
terrorist attacks. The economy picked up handsomely. But then a
stalemate ensued in the campaign against the terrorists that cannot be
attributed only to the country’s jungles. The mafias that owe their
existence to the criminalization of cocaine continue to generate enough
funds to match every attempt by the government to beef up its military
capability.
Legalizing or decriminalizing cocaine would do much to improve America’s inner cities and it ought to be seriously considered, even if it means more doped-up middle-class white teenagers. But legalization — whether in Colombia or the United States — is not obviously the way out for Colombia.
The positive scenario is that legalization eliminates the profits from the drug trade and the Colombian nasties pack up shop and go away. In a legal market, Merck would outcompete the drug barons. Maybe they would grow more coffee.
I see two negative scenarios. First, cocaine production has been a boon to the Colombian economy. It is no accident that Colombia experienced no currency crisis, unlike most other Latin countries. (For contrast, here are some arguments that cocaine has hurt the Colombian economy; I don’t believe it.) The rural Colombian economy might well collapse, taking civil order with it.
Second, the Colombian civil war is 40 years old and it predates the importance of cocaine. Narco-traffickers set up processing labs in Colombia because the government did not control the country in the first place. Legalizing cocaine would devastate their incomes, and probably bring political assassinations and military conflicts into the capitol. It is not clear Colombia can handle it. Keep in mind these same groups once, when threatened with more extraditions, stormed the Supreme Court and almost got away with it. Cocaine profits, however evil they may be, give the guerrilla groups some stake in the status quo.
That said, cocaine legalization probably would have helped Colombia in the late 1970s, before the paramilitaries became so rich. That doesn’t mean the same idea will work today.
The bottom line: There is no simple way out of the Colombian mess. Slow evolution away from cocaine production, combined with increasing economic diversification, is probably the best hope. Chemical substitutes, such as Ecstasy, mean that the cocaine market
will slowly dry up anyway. This slower change, which can’t be pinned
on any government, is a better way out of the current mess than a
drastic and more sudden legalization. In the meantime, Uribe’s policy of getting tough has paid some dividends, and there is no reason to think these gains cannot be extended.
Addendum: Anne Applebaum argues for opium legalization in the context of Afghanistan. But note that opium production may account for as much as 2/3 of Afghani gdp. It is unclear that Afghanistan would keep these markets in a purely legal setting, so how would the country survive the shock to its real income? Or should we give them a monopoly and cartelize their industry to boost profits but limit consumption?
Bogota thoughts
Unlike Mexico City and Rio, most of the shops don’t have private security guards or much in the way of security systems. Bars on home windows are unusual. I haven’t heard many sirens. Solo women walk around many parts of town. Fear of civil war, kidnapping, and paramilitary guerrillas is no reason to postpone a trip. From a tourist’s point of view, Bogota is more secure than most other Latin American cities.
There is less glamour here than I expected, and most of the city is solidly working class, lower middle class. People are well dressed but in a relatively formal way; there is little sartorial individuality or flair. Dark clothes, especially black, are the default style, but not in a Will Wilkinson cool hipster sort of way. Rather the message is "it rains here a lot and it is cool and foggy and we have endured centuries of violence, so why wear floral pink?" The bowler hat, however, is now passe.
Bookstores and libraries are everywhere, and it is common to see people reading or carrying books. The shops display their serious books, not the junk. The museums are the best in South America, for both content and presentation.
Bicycling is a big deal, and the bus system is well-developed to an extreme. The water is potable. The green hills around the city are attractive, the colonial part of town has wonderful colors and houses, and the modern architecture is getting better.
Colombianos are remarkably gracious and friendly. There is nothing like isolation to make people love foreigners. Does having a bad international reputation make people nicer to compensate?
You have to utter "good day" to the guard each time you enter a new room in a museum. People open doors for each other. No one is loud. It all feels vaguely right-wing.
The local soup mixes shredded chicken, avocado, potato, corn, capers, cream, and herbs for a tasty blend. So far the food doesn’t thrill me; too many restaurants remain in the meat and potatoes stage; being in the Andes has never been good for any cuisine, except of course for their hearty soups.
The people look surprisingly homogeneous; I expected more Caribbean types and indigenous. That said, the Turks run the textile trade and there are plenty of Chinese (so-called) restaurants. Indian features are common, but blended into a broadly Spanish mix. No one is very tall.
How can such a nice place be in the midst of a civil war and guerrilla uprising? Why do leaders in the highest reaches of government secretly work with the paramilitaries? Does every radio station in the country play Juanes, and how long will their Tower branches last?
Here is a good reading list on politics and institutions, but do any of these pieces explain what I am seeing?
Not Normal on the New Deal
Readers will not be surprised to know that I am not normal. Indeed, I have not been normal for a long time as this post from 4 years ago attests:
Roosevelt and the Great Depression
I was amused to see Conrad Black writing with shock:
Jim Powell of the Cato Institute (cited approvingly in a recent column by Robert L. Bartley) argues in a new book that FDR actually prolonged the Depression!
Of course, Powell is correct. Imagine, increasing the power of
unions to strike and raise wages during a time of mass strikes and mass
unemployment. Imagine thinking that cartelizing whole industries
thereby raising prices and reducing output could improve the economy.
Not everything Roosevelt did was counterproductive – he did end
prohibition (although in order to raise taxes) – but plenty was and
worst of all was the uncertainty created by Roosevelt’s vicious attacks
on business. (See, for example, the work of Bob Higgs especially this important paper and historian Gary Dean Best’s overlooked classic Pride, Prejudice and Politics.)
Business investment failed to recover because business people
legitimately feared a regime change like that which had occured in
Germany and Italy. Sound extreme? Roosevelt himself threatened/promised
this in his first inaugural:
…if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and
loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline,
because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership
becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our
lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a
leadership which aims at a larger good… I assume unhesitatingly the
leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined
attack upon our common problems….in the event that the Congress shall
fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the
national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear
course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress
for… the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded
by a foreign foe.
My Law and Literature reading list
Bible, Book of Exodus
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Ambler, Eric, A Coffin for Dimitrios
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Saramago, Jose, Blindness
Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast
J.M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Kafka, Franz, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, translation by Neugroschel
Verissimo, Luis Fernando, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans
Year’s Best SF9, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
White, T.H. The Once and Future King
Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, Perennial Library edition
Glaspell’s Trifles, on the web
Moby Dick, excerpts, on the web, the parts of the common law of whaling
Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Depending on time we will view some movies, start by buying Double Indemnity.
The reading list is much changed. There are fewer classics, more genre fiction, and more Latin fiction. On the plane back from Miami I reread Eric Ambler’s Coffin for Dimitrios; few people know this novel but it is one of the best spy/detective stories, period.
How to cook with Indian spices
Buy whole spices, not ground. Get:
Cinnamon stick (not the Mexican kind)
Cumin
Coriander
Cloves
Cardamom, preferably both green and black
Black peppercorns
Red chilis, or red chili powder
Wet ginger paste (go to an Indian grocer’s), or fresh ginger, never ever ever powdered ginger
Garam masala, here a good powder from an Indian mart is OK though better to make it fresh
Turmeric, powder will do
For bases, draw upon:
1. Sauteed and pureed yellow onions
2. Plain yogurt, some will wish to add heavy cream as a thickener
3. Coconut milk
Now start your dish. Create the chosen base. Ghee (clarified butter) can be added to #1 or #2 for yummy richness but I usually don’t for health reasons. Don’t mix #2 and #3.
Then take your preferred mix of spices. Fry the hard ones for two to three minutes over medium heat (3.5 on an electric stove) and puree them. Cinnamon stick should be left whole in the sauce to leach out its flavor. Never are more than three cloves needed and they can be left whole too. Cardamoms can be inserted whole and then removed, especially if large ones are smashed open a bit with a blunt edge. Otherwise experiment with preferred combinations.
In a separate pan, quickly cook your preferred meat over high heat, just enough to make it a bit translucent or pink. Insert the partially cooked stuff into the liquid base and turn to low heat until the dish is ready.
Vegetables can be substituted for meat.
You can introduce mace and mustard seeds, or tomato can be a base in sauces.
You now have a combinatorial knowledge of many many Indian recipes and you need not memorize anything.
By the way, if you must buy powdered curry, Golden Bell is by far the best. It is packed with bay leaves and stays potent for months. You can sautee some chopped yellow onions, toss in ground lamb, douse it in Golden Bell, cook over low heat until dry, and when on the plate, over rice, coat it in plain yogurt.
How to appreciate Shakespeare
…right now, at this very moment, one can see more great Shakespeare, one can find more transformative Shakespearean experiences, from what is already on film even in the form of tape or DVD on a television screen than the average person, even the average critic, will see on stage in a life time.
That is from Ron Rosenbaum’s generally quite good The Shakespeare Wars. His list:
1. Orson Welles, Chimes at Midnight [TC: also Welles’s best movie]
2. Peter Brook, King Lear
3. Richard III, with Laurence Olivier
4. Hamlet, with Richard Burton
To this list I would add Welles’s Othello and — more controversially — Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Haitian voodoo scenes and all; Rosembaum is more positive than negative about that one, but it doesn’t make his list.
Ordem e Progresso
One data point aside, the most obvious difference in Rio, from ten years ago, is how much safer it
seems. Many parts of town that were previously filled with stalkers and
snatchers and kiddie gangs are now quite walkable and indeed pleasant.
Small crimes have gone down in frequency, but crime occurs on a larger
scale. The city has been parceled out, and if the police control a part
of town they are able to keep snatchings and the like to a minimum, unlike ten
years ago. That said, the clashes at the fringes, between the police and
the favela kings, are, according to my Brazilian friends, more frequent and
more violent. There is greater cartelization of territory, with
tighter control within each market, but more at stake on the borders.
As Americans (and Russians) we are not used to visiting large, insular
countries like our own, but Brazil is just that. The diversity is remarkable, for one example Sao Paulo has about three
million ethnic Japanese. But as in the United States, much of the
diversity is an illusion. You can be from anywhere, and do anything you
want, but somehow you still only have the option of being Brazilian.
Hardly anyone here speaks English, or indeed anything other than
Portuguese. Many people claim to speak Spanish; that only means if you
speak to them in Spanish they are willing to answer you back in Portuguese,
with one or two Spanish words thrown in. There are few concessions to
tourists, and even the most famous sites are visited mainly by Brazilians,
not foreigners. It is one of the best experiences of intense cultural
immersion you can get.
Yes there are string bikinis but they are overrepresented on
postcards. The ocean walk in Rio is full
of people who should not be wearing bikinis. Brazilian women are among
the world’s most beautiful but in part because they do not insist of being
superthin. They will overwhelm you with their sensual earthiness, and
their true appeal doesn’t rest much on their looks one way or the other.
I had to wait four hours for a connecting flight from Sao Paulo to Rio. I saw hundreds of Brazilians waiting for different flights (have I mentioned that infrastructure is terrible?), but not once did I see anyone reading a book.
The food is better than I remember it, top sirloin being the best cut at a
churrascaria. The cheeses, while not complex, are superb. The cold antipasti are often the best part of the
meal. Only Italy has better pasta, and even that is debatable.
I find it hard to finish Our Mutual Friend, perhaps because the plot
still doesn’t make sense to me, not even on second reading. Still, I hold
an obvious fascination with serial stories which pretend to be about one thing
and are in fact deeply about something quite different; those who read MR most
closely already know this, even if they can’t always figure out the plot.
My favorite things Brazil
1. Painter: Candido Portinari is the obvious choice, try this one, or here, but he is not well-represented on-line. Jose Antonio da Silva, the naive painter, is a personal favorite; here is one image, here are two more.
2. Movie: Black Orpheus, if seen on a big screen, is splendid from beginning to end. Imagine Rio with empty, unpopulated hills. More recently, I am fond of Central Station, and regard City of God as just a bit overrated.
3. Music: This topic needs a post all its own, and you will get one soon enough.
4. Novel: Brazil (or is it the translators?) is oddly weak in this category. I’ll nominate Jorge Amado’s Dona Flor, or Machado de Assis, his still underrated Epitaph of a Small Winner. Here are more authors, but I await your guidance. By the way, I think Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes is a good read but I haven’t been able to finish any of the others by him.
5. Natural wonder: Iguassu is one of the best natural sights in the world. Imagine a big waterfall 17 km long, and with coatimundis, amazing butterflies, and churrascaria nearby.
6. Non-fiction books about: I love Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s transcendent Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. My runner-up pick would be Alex Shoumanoff, Capital of Hope, about Brasilia. The classic works of Gilbert Freyre are good background on the country, as is Brazil: Once and Future Country.
7. Sculptor: Avant-garde Helio Oiticica is all the rage these days. They put two of his works out at MOMA, a big Tropicalia show in the Bronx, plus a big solo show is coming to Houston, I hope to see it there. The on-line images destroy the angles and the content of the boxes, maybe try this one, but best to see it live.
8. Favorite food: The small towns near Curitiba, in the south, have the world’s best beef plus amazing pasta.
The bottom line: Might Brazil be the best place, period? To visit, that is.
Snow Crashed
Somedays I feel like I have woken up in a Neal Stephenson novel. The following is not science fiction:
The poster child for profitable Second Life businesses is Ailin Graef–better known by her avatar’s name, Anshe Chung–and
Anshe Chung Studios, the business she
runs with her husband, Guntram Graef.Originally, the two ran the company from Germany, but at the beginning of
this year, they set up shop in Wuhan, a large city in China, and are now
employing more than 30 people full-time at, she says, better than local average
wages.Last month, Ailin Graef issued a press release announcing that the company’s
total holdings, comprised mainly of virtual land in Second Life, were
worth more than a million real-life dollars. For those who aren’t familiar with
the complex economies of virtual worlds, such a claim may seem incomprehensible.But for anyone who has spent significant time in Second Life, the
number seems all too possible, given Chung’s dominance of the land market there.On Monday, Graef visited Second Life for a
discussion about her business, how best to set up businesses in Second
Life and the nature of competition there.Unfortunately, as the interview was commencing, the event was attacked by a
"griefer," someone intent on disrupting the proceedings. The griefer managed to
assault the CNET theater for 15 minutes with–well, there’s no way to say this
delicately–animated flying penises.It’s not clear why the griefer attacked, but Anshe Chung is controversial to
some Second Life residents for reasons such as inflexibility on land
pricing, the signs she has placed in many areas of the virtual world that are
visible to anyone flying overhead, and her ability to get many residents to sell
their land to her.
How good was Pinochet for the Chilean economy?
Currency policy: The early to mid 1980s were a disaster, largely because Chilean banks were unsound and Chile pegged to a rising U.S. dollar. This was the biggest economic mistake of the Pinochet regime. It was a huge error which ruined the Chilean economy for years. It should be noted, however, that the move from 1000 percent inflation to 10 percent inflation is never an easy one.
Copper: Rising copper prices were a key part of Chilean economic success, and yes Allende had nationalized the copper mines. Pinochet did not re-privatize them. You can count this in his favor, but not in a free market way. Note that copper often counted for 50 percent or more of Chilean export earnings. You can talk about voucher privatization, but in fact the Chilean state needed a fiscal base to avoid the distortionary (but revenue-raising) policies that are otherwise so common in Latin America.
Agriculture and diversification: Chile moved from very high tariffs to virtual free trade. The Chilean economy diversified and became far less dependent on copper; this included some moves to hi-tech and light industry. The regime gets high marks on this score, as few modern nations have benefited more from free trade. Under Allende tariffs were commonly 100 percent or higher. Conception was the most rapidly growing Chilean city during much of the reform era, and this shows that the story is not just about copper.
Welfare: As in the New Zealand economic miracle, social welfare spending rose over the broader course of the Pinochet reforms. I take this to be for public choice and social control reasons, not benevolence. The distributional consequences of the Chilean reforms were generally inegalitarian, although there was the creation of a large and growing middle class.
Social security: The vaunted "privatization" was in fact done on top of an already-existing government-run system. Its free market nature is much overrated. It probably was a good idea at the time, given the stellar performance of the Chilean stock market (which it helped drive), but it has created long-run problems and it is no longer a system to be envied.
School vouchers: Not clear they had much of an effect. But I recall seeing a more positive recent study, which I can no longer find. Here is more debate.
Privatization: Pinochet sold off steel, fertilizer, and an airline, among other companies. The procedures were corrupt, but nonetheless an improvement overall. There was no good reason why those companies should have been owned by the state.
Banks: Interest rates were freed up and financial repression was replaced by financial liberalization. Do note that the Chilean government took over the banking system in 1983 or so, to avoid collapse, but later returned it to private hands.
The Allende regime: It was ruining the Chilean economy. The recipe included deficits, foreign debt, high inflation, price controls, and devaluation, the usual stuff. The guy was brave, but as a leader we should not idolize him. He was an economic disaster.
Credibility: The Pinochet regime did restore the economic credibility of Chile. Investors came to expect pro-commercial policies. Although Pinochet himself was deeply corrupt (this was not known at the time), on net Chile extended its reputation as the least corrupt country in Latin America.
The 1990s: Much of the superior economic performance of Chile came after Pinochet left the stage (do look at the graph behind that link). But the roots of this growth spring from the Pinochet years. The moderate and left-wing successors left virtually all of his economic policies in place and of course they were democratic and eliminated the torture.
The bottom line: Many economic mistakes were made. The biggest gains came from agricultural diversification, general credibility, the rising demand for copper, and the move away from terrible economic policies. Chile had the best economic policies in South America from the late 1980s onward and it was and still is the envy of the continent. But Chilean history from this period is as much a "state-building" miracle as a "free market" miracle.
The Wikipedia entry on Chilean economic policy is reasonably good. Here are some other links. Out of the Ashes is the most comprehensive defense of Pinochet; it has useful material but overall it is not to be trusted. Google yields up many more critiques than defenses.
Pinochet the man behaved so badly, both during his term and after, as to be morally indefensible. From second hand accounts I have heard, it is also not clear how much the man himself was personally responsible for the good economic policies. Still many good policies happened. We need a closer look at the Chilean economic legacy, which is a complicated story and by no means wholly negative.
Addendum: It is worth asking which reforms could have succeeded in a democratic environment, but that would require a post all its own. Someday you will get it.
When in doubt, sell
It seems that Bildungsroman has sold her books in Costa Rica, after an agonizing Auseinandersetzung over the matter.
I know not the details of this case, but empirical economics suggests a lesson. Endowment effects are significant, especially for people who are not professional traders of the item in question. That means we tend to value things more, simply because those things are ours.
With some probability, that tendency is just plain irrational. It might make sense to treat our friends or our babies this way, or to act this way in a subsistence economy, but endowment effects should not rule the behavior of not-so-risk-averse well-off, Americans. So if you are even considering selling something, you probably should do so.
Bye, bye books. And don’t buy another commodity, invest in memorable experiences.
I might add that when it concerns equities, buy and hold is better than portfolio turnover. For second best reasons, people would be better served by a stronger endowment effect; greater possessiveness would cancel out their mistaken belief that they can beat the market.
Addendum: I believe that endowment effects are stronger for items we have paid for or won through competitive effort. This means that your kid should pay for some of his or her college education, read more here.