Results for “food” 1950 found
Jevons’s law of one price
Can of coconut milk at Whole Foods: $1.59
Can of coconut milk at my local Asian grocery: 59 cents
Fish is also less than half the price, albeit with bones and sometimes a face. But the lines are shorter and the crowds are more fun. What are you waiting for?
China fact of the day
China is the world’s greatest consumer of dog meat, eating as many as 20 million dogs a year.
…in Beijing, Dog restaurateur Wang Qiming says business is good.
"There are many who eat dogs. Before, young people didn’t, but now they do."
…Restaurants claim that the boom in dog ownership in China hasn’t caused a decline in the eating of dogs.
Chef Zhang Jinxiong says business has never been better. "Dog meat is a good dish. If everyone misses the opportunity to eat it, in the future they may regret it." [TC: Huh?]
So this is China in 2006, the Year of the Dog: a nation at once embracing the canine as a pet, a way to make money, and as food.
And perhaps, as can only be happening in China, all are booming at the same time.
Here is the story, and thanks to Yan Li for the pointer.
Addendum: MeganinVietnam offers another report, not for the squeamish.
Jean-Francois Revel dies
It has been a tough week for writers, here is one obituary. Here is Wikipedia. Here is a review of his essay on why Europeans hate Americans. Revel was probably the most important conservative French thinker of the last thirty or forty years; his writings on food and gastronomy also repay the effort of study.
My favorite things New York City
1. My favorite demographic charts: Track population changes by borough.
2. My favorite NYC dining guide blog: Click on the categories on the top row of the blog to see the whole thing.
3. Favorite neighborhood: To live in? Manhattan is getting so uncool. I will pick the corner of Hudson and Barrow, which is near W. Houston and the West Side Highway, just north of the Saatchi building. There it still looks and feels like the New York City I grew up with (from New Jersey, that is). But when will I have the money and the courage to try? The Upper East Side bores me and the best food is in Queens; neither is suitable for real life.
4. Favorite book about: Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan, by Philip Lopate. I am surprised how few people know this one. Compulsively readable, and it makes me want to write a comparable work. But "A Drive Around Fairfax"? No way.
5. Favorite dim sum: Oriental Garden, in Chinatown, Elizabeth St., make sure to arrive early. Don’t forget Flushing, especially if you have time to kill at LaGuardia. The juicy pork buns at Joe’s Shanghai? Jackson Diner is still great Indian food though it is not the revelation it once was; the competition has caught up with it.
6. Best lunch bargain: Nougatine, the bistro attached to Jean-Georges. Get the venison with green chiles for its amazing mix of textures and heat.
7. Favorite Seinfeld episode: How about Master of His Domain? Soup Nazi is overrated and in fact I don’t even like it. The one where Jerry and Elaine try to be together again is another favorite, plus Show Within a Show.
8. Favorite free activity that even most New Yorkers don’t do: Browse the auction displays at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, especially before the major auctions in May and November.
Movies, music, literature? Not today. You might as well try "My Favorite Things Not in New York" for an easier task.
Missing words
Often after I’ve heard of something for the first time – a food, a place, a person — I start hearing about it everywhere. Shouldn’t there be a word for this?
"Newbiquitous" is suggested.
Is there a word for the common experience of saying something to your child and then realizing — often with a shock — that you sound like one of your own parents?
"Mamamorphosis" is one idea.
My husband and I are in search of a word for the fear of throwing a party and having no one show up.
"Guestlessness"?
How about people who hit the "send" button for email without first attaching the file?
"Deficit sending" is recommended. Or "sends of omission."
Jonathan Zuber wants "…a verb meaning ‘to go do something and return having absentmindedly done one or more other things instead.’""
Any ideas?
You can put other requests, or suggestions, in the comments…
Caught my eye
1. The Selfish Gene, thirty years later, transcript and audio file.
2. Inside Man. I’ve been burned by Spike Lee movies too many, oh so many times, but this one is excellent. It is also a study in game theory and the value of meta-rationality. While we are on the topic, how did I forget Live and Let Die – the only good Roger Moore James Bond film — on my list of notable movies set in Louisiana?
3. Charles Murray on his new book and plan for welfare reform. An interesting idea, but can you say "time inconsistency" three times in a row fast?
4. James Surowiecki on why newspapers are not doomed.
5. Don’t expect too much from job retraining.
6. Steve Levitt’s Africa fact of the day, and yes it involves both sex and violence.
7. Stanislaw Lem passes away; could his Solaris be the best science fiction novel ever? Don’t forget the Tarkovsky film version either.
My favorite things Louisiana
Ah, to be on the road again… Most of my reporting from Louisiana will likely appear in another venue (links in due time); for now you must be content with these notes:
1. Favorite song: King Porter Stomp, by Jelly Roll Morton. I didn’t think about this one much, though many Louis Armstrong songs are fair contenders. To sort through music more generally would take hours. In addition to jazz, Cajun music, zydeco, and "swamp pop," there is Jerry Lee Lewis, Leadbelly, Mahalia Jackson, Little Walter, Buddy Guy, Lucinda Williams, and yes Britney Spears.
2. Movie, set in: Southern Comfort remains underrated. Interview with the Vampire was better than expected. Water Boy has a few funny jokes. There is also Streetcar Named Desire (not my thing), Big Easy, The Drowning Pool, The Apostle, and last but not least The Blob was filmed in Abbeville.
3. Writer: I don’t much like Truman Capote, though I can see he was important at the time. John Kennedy Toole is a good pick, don’t forget Kate Chopin, plus I will confess a weakness for the best of Anne Rice; Witching Hour and Lasher are my favorites. Elmore Leonard rounds out a strong category, and I am likely forgetting some notables.
4. Artist: John James Audobon did some of his work in Louisiana, plus he was born in Haiti. Does that count? Clementine Hunter is one pick from the Naives. Here is another picture by her.
5. Dish: Boudin blanc or peppered, boiled crayfish. Overall I prefer the simple rural food to the New Orleans Creole style and its heavier roux-based sauces.
6. Architecture: There are many wonders, try this typical and not even extraordinary house from the Garden District.
The bottom line: Riches await you here.
Drought Insurance
The NYTimes reports on an innovation in disaster aid, drought insurance taken out by relief agencies.
In a pilot project that could someday transform the world’s
approach to disaster emergencies, the World Food Program has taken out
an insurance policy that will pay it should Ethiopia’s notoriously
fickle rains fail this year…The policy, which costs $930,000, was devised to create
a new way of financing natural disaster aid. Instead of waiting for
drought to hit, and people to suffer, and then pursuing money from
donors to be able to respond, the World Food Program has crunched the
numbers from past droughts and taken out insurance on the income losses
that Ethiopian farmers would face should the rains fail…….If it works, the insurance will get emergency money flowing
faster, before the haunting images of dying babies reach television
sets. It would also shift the risk from farmers to financiers.
Insurance like this could even have benefits in the United States. Private firms, of course, often do buy disaster insurance but the United States government might want to do the same. Hurricane insurance, for example, bought by the US government could better spread the costs of disasters to the well-diversified. In theory, the government could duplicate any insurance program with a tax and spending program (give Bill Gates money now and tax him when the disaster occurs) but in practice it’s going to be much easier to commit to an insurance plan than to an equivalent tax and spend plan.
More generally, drought insurance on this scale is part of the New Financial Order. I refer to Robert Shiller’s work on using macro-markets to
offer large-scale insurance. A market in GDP futures, for example,
could be used to hedge against declines in GDP such as have occured in
Argentina, South Korea or the future United States (yes Tyler, it could happen!).
Markets in the income of professions as a whole, e.g. the the income of
dentists, could be used by dentists to hedge against the possibility of
a super anti-cavity sealant. See Entrepreneurial Economics for more on macro markets.
Thanks to Alex Wolman for the pointer and Robin Hanson for discussion.
How does the fashion industry work without copyright?
Scott Cunningham directs our attention to "The Piracy Paradox," a new law and economics paper on the economics of fashion. The authors argue that the fashion sector has more innovation because of its near-absence of copyright protection. Here is some brief background on the issue.
Fashion is a status good. You wear a new design if some other people do (it must be focal as an object of status), but not if too many other people do. You want some degree of exclusivity to your wardrobe. So let’s say a new design comes out. There will be some early adopters, but then a rapid series of rip-offs from other companies. Once the rip-offs come, companies invest in making further designs. Fashion is ephemeral and the rip-offs spur the next round of innovation. (BTW, here is an economic model of innovation in the fashion sector, and here are some common-sense critiques. Here is a piece on the ethics of fashion copying.)
Ex ante, the companies invest in production capacity. They don’t know if they will be copied or copiers, but the costs and benefits wash to keep normal rates of return. There is more to the argument but read the paper if you are interested. By the way, the authors claim that European fashion industries receive much more copyright protection, but do not seem to be more efficient.
Micro question: For this model to work, what underlying assumptions are needed about the costs of design relative to the dollar flow of fashion demand? A low ratio of fixed to marginal costs? A lingering cache from having been the first with a new style? Here is one unconvincing attempt to answer the question; do tackle this in the comments if you have further ideas.
The authors list a few other areas where copyright protection is weak or non-existent: food recipes, furniture design, tattoos (until recently), trendy hairstyles, and perfume scents. I would add to the list calligraphy, topiaries (I love that word), and chess games. The point is not that these can serve as models for the music or movie industries but rather to figure out how they differ and why the absence of IP protection has led to (apparently) acceptable results.
Here is the legal reasoning why fashion is not well-protected.
Kathleen Fasanella, one of my favorite MR readers, directs our attention to this IP-related fashion blog.
Markets in everything, gastronomy edition
I can’t bring myself to excerpt any part of this article on the ever-tasteful MR. You might think there are no surprises left in this category but even I found more than I had been expecting. And at least five of the sentences in the article made me laugh. Thanks to www.2blowhards.com for the pointer.
Paris advice
1. A few of the best restaurants are Pierre Gagnaire, Taillevent, Le Cinq, and perhaps Guy Savoy. Most critics might put Gagnaire as number one.
2. Michelin "two-forkers" are quite good, but you must book to get in. In general you can’t get a seat in a decent Parisian restaurant unless you either book or show up at opening. If you are wandering around looking for good food at 8:30 p.m., or for that matter 1 p.m., you are unlikely to do well.
3. In The Louvre, spend an hour in the Poussin room and also obsess over Watteau’s Voyage to Cythera.
4. In Musee d’Orsay, gaze at Courbet’s Origin of the World (sorry, I can’t link to the image on a family blog but do Google it) and Puis de Chavannes, in addition to the usual delights.
5. Go see the medieval tapestries at Musee Cluny.
6. Spend a few hours walking the main roads of the Left Bank. Start at Invalides and take the major arteries through to the Islamic Center. Walk, walk, walk.
7. Watch The Triplets of Belleville and spend hours walking through the (rapidly gentrifying) working-class neighborhoods of the Right Bank. The Metro is splendid but it robs you from seeing the greatest walking city on earth (Buenos Aires is number two). Don’t take it. Walk, walk, walk.
8. Go into a good cheese shop and spend $40. Focus on the weirder cheeses. Buy the non-pasteurized delights. Sit down with a baguette and some fruit as well, finishing the meal with small squares of outrageously priced dark chocolate. Throw in a sausage for good measure. Keep the cheese leftovers in your room at night and eat them for breakfast the next day. And the day after that. See how many days they will keep, you will be surprised.
9. Rue de Bussi and thereabouts has a convenient collection of cheese, fruit and bread shops, and it is in an excellent part of the Left Bank.
10. Internet Cafes are hard to come by. You must rely on the dumpy area near Centre de Pompidou. I find Paris to be the hardest city to blog from.
11. See a "world music" concert from Algeria, Madagascar, or the Congo. Or try contemporary music at IRCAM.
12. Here is my previous post My Favorite Things French. Douse yourself in Godard films before going. Start with Breathless, Band of Strangers, and My Life to Live.
13. If you want to read recent French social science (if you can call it that), try Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, Jean Baudrillard, Alain Badiou’s Metapolitics, and Gilles Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus. Don’t get too upset if these books only make intermittent sense. At least they are alive. For a recent hit novel, try Houllebecq’s The Elementary Particles.
Comments are open, and I encourage all of you but especially John Nye and Barkley Rosser — both Paris experts — to make a few suggestions for my friend.
A Whitman Sampler
Glen Whitman has got Coase in the brain. In Against the New
Paternalism: Internalities and the Economics of Self-Control he puts Coasian insights to good use arguing against the new paternalism of internalities.
Writing the paper must have been hard, hard work because Glen has now got the Coasian Blues. (More at the link!).
You can hire an agent to work in your basement
But you know there’s a
possible cost:
That dude could be shirkin’ yet oughta be workin’
If you
don’t hire monitors, boss!You can bring on a man to run your food
stand,
But your firm could be courtin’ a loss.
‘Cause that helpful young
man might come up with a plan
To abscond with your so-special sauce!Yeah you pick and you choose… the markets you use;
And if you
pick wrong… you’ll be singing the blues.I know that one day if my
tears go away
Then my cheeks’ll be rosy in hue
But until that day comes to
pass I must say,
I’ll be singin’ the Coasean Blues.
Foregone Pareto improvements?
In Kenya, four million people are facing hunger due to severe drought. A New Zealand dog food manufacturer offered to donate 6,000 emergency packs of dog food mixture to help feed Kenyan orphans. A Kenyan government spokesman said: "We appreciate the offer, but we dismiss it as culturally insulting."
That is from Mahalanobis, courtesy of Silly Economist.
In search of superlatives
Just how good is the food in Hermosillo? After I showed up in the much-inferior Chihuahua, I had what was probably the best goat I have eaten in my life. I was, in relative terms, disappointed by my meal.
Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding
Princeton has set up a web page for my forthcoming book, due out March 31 or so. Here is their summary:
Americans agree about government arts funding in the way the women in the old joke agree about the food at the wedding: it’s terrible–and such small portions! Americans typically either want to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, or they believe that public arts funding should be dramatically increased because the arts cannot survive in the free market. It would take a lover of the arts who is also a libertarian economist to bridge such a gap. Enter Tyler Cowen. In this book he argues why the U.S. way of funding the arts, while largely indirect, results not in the terrible and the small but in Good and Plenty–and how it could result in even more and better.
Few would deny that America produces and consumes art of a quantity and quality comparable to that of any country. But is this despite or because of America’s meager direct funding of the arts relative to European countries? Overturning the conventional wisdom of this question, Cowen argues that American art thrives through an ingenious combination of small direct subsidies and immense indirect subsidies such as copyright law and tax policies that encourage nonprofits and charitable giving. This decentralized and even somewhat accidental–but decidedly not laissez-faire–system results in arts that are arguably more creative, diverse, abundant, and politically unencumbered than that of Europe.
Bringing serious attention to the neglected issue of the American way of funding the arts, Good and Plenty is essential reading for anyone concerned about the arts or their funding.
You can pre-order the book here.