Results for “food” 2044 found
Sri Lanka notes
If you go to cross the street, cars actually will stop for you.
It’s a lovely country to visit. It is exotic, quite safe (these days), and it’s much cleaner than I had been expecting. Both of my guidebooks claim the food is mediocre, but you can find excellent Sri Lankan dishes by going to small restaurants and paying less than a dollar (the actual restaurant scene does seem underdeveloped, though the places in the Cinnamon Grand are quite good). Just look for places where everyone is eating with their hands.
Order any vegetarian dish with cashews or a cashew sauce.
The place feels like an odd mix of Thailand and, of all places, Curacao. The old capital, Kandy, is vaguely reminiscent of Nara, Japan in its overall presentation and its feel of Buddhist classicism.
Interior design seems to be their area of greatest accomplishment. The relevant sites are numerous but spread out.
The literacy rate is about 92%. A visit to Sri Lanka will increase your opinion of “water transport” theories of high social indicators.
Here is an update on where ethnic tensions stand.
The Chinese are trying to buy them off with infrastructure, most of all port facilities.
The coconuts are orange.
I thank Yana for useful conversations related to this post.
Assorted links
1. Kenyan reality TV, which involves niceness and telling people how to run their farms.
2. Chinese food density by NYC neighborhood.
3. How men are spending their money these days, back side first.
4. One Indian court rules that if you have casual sex you are married. And the price of onions is a political issue there and that is up 112% since 2012.
My favorite things Sri Lanka
This is a tough one, and I admit failure in advance, and yes I will call upon the diaspora in this case. But even that doesn’t much help me. Here goes:
1. Popular music: M.I.A., with Arular and then Kala being my favorite works by her.
2. Science fiction writer, lived in: Arthur C. Clarke lived there for over fifty years.
3. Author: Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, I like but do not love his work. Two quite recent Sri Lankan novels are Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel, and Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane, both noteworthy.
4. Movie, set in: I can’t think of one. Bridge on the River Kwai was filmed here.
5. Architect: Geoffrey Bawa, some images are here.
Is Lal Jayawardena the most famous Sri Lankan economist? And I have had excellent Sri Lankan food in Germany, most of all in Berlin. There is a takeaways Sri Lankan place in Derwood, Maryland, Spice Lanka, which I have yet to try. When I was much younger, the Sri Lankan chess player Sunil Weeramantry was always very cordial to me. And my grandmother had a Sri Lankan friend who, when I was a small boy, used to bring us cashews. I liked him. I think of the music — perhaps unfairly — as falling into the “raucous, influenced by cinema, good jolly fun but I’m not going to buy it” category, but I would gladly receive your better-informed recommendations in the comments.
Sorry people, I’ll try harder next time. I don’t follow cricket and I know virtually nothing about cinema here, I hope to learn more.
Eating in Bangalore
Many of you useful MR reader recommendations here. I’ll recommend the Muslim food stalls along Cock Burn avenue, especially during Ramadan. First-rate for haleem is Hotel Fanoos (the attached restaurant) in Richmondtown, near the Hosur Water Tank. The Chinese restaurant in the Oberoi is not to be missed. For South Indian food, try Athityam in Jayanagar 5th block, make sure you order some specials and go beyond the dosas, which are excellent but not the best item here. My favorite was the Pesarattu.
Further assorted links
1. China food, toilet, and ice comparison of the day.
2. Korean-language summary of my Edinburgh forum on the global economy with Paul Krugman (originally billed as a debate, but that’s not how it turned out and overall we agreed more than we disagreed, at least given the topics that were covered. Here is the English-language Doosan press release.)
3. Ed Glaeser did an April EconTalk on urban failure and on Detroit in particular.
Assorted links
1. I would bet against betting therapy.
3. Power struggle in Pakistan.
4. Cola-flavored wine, from France.
5. When police are recorded by video cameras, citizen complaints go way down.
McDonald’s pulls out of Iceland
McDonald’s is to close its business in Iceland because the country’s financial crisis has made it too expensive to operate its franchise.
The fast food giant said its three outlets in the country would shut – and that it had no plans to return.
Besides the economy, McDonald’s blamed the “unique operational complexity” of doing business in an isolated nation with a population of just 300,000.
Iceland’s first McDonald’s restaurant opened in 1993.
Here is more. Most of all, it is more expensive to import inputs (oddly, the story does not mention capital controls). The restaurants will be reconfigured and in their new identity they will source Icelandic products much more.
Here is a brief update on the economy of Iceland, including a discussion of Iceland’s significant fiscal consolidation. By the way, the country has seen two years running on negative growth in health spending.
Here is an article on how much immigrants are starting to contribute to the economy of Iceland. I bought a mineral water from a “Cafe Haiti” in Reykjavik and I believe it was not there the last time I visited, nineteen years ago.
I enjoyed the new Samsung ad for Iceland.
My favorite things Iceland
1. Saga: First choice goes to Njal’s Saga. It’s the clearest and crispest of the lot.
2. Novel, modern: How about Audur Ava Olafsdottir’s The Greenhouse? This is a boom area. There are one hundred twenty Icelandic novels translated into German each year [correction of earlier estimate].
3. Popular music: Sigur Ros, Agaetis Byrjun. This CD has a transcendental and also anthemic sound, even if the group never quite lived up to their initial promise. Bjork albums I usually find pretentious and I would rather listen to her earlier group The Sugar Cubes.
4. Annual tournament: Ram groping.
5. Sea bird: The puffin, followed by the guillemot.
6. Video: Daniel Tammet learns how to speak Icelandic in a week. That’s hard.
7. Economist: Erik Brynjolfsson, although I do not believe he was born in Iceland.
8. Movie: Maybe 101 Reyjkavik? I have yet to see The Deep.
9. Movie, set in: Die Another Day, an underrated Bond movie in my view.
10. Vista: How about Höfn?
I am excited that we are arriving this morning. And as for the food, don’t forget the glories of skyr.
What I’ve been reading
1. Derek Sayer, Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History. There needs to be a single word for “excellent if read in conjunction with other books on the same topic, though a quality but wasted effort if read alone.” This book is that.
2. Tom Miller, China’s Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History. Excellent on land use but also one of the very best books on the Chinese economy, as seen through the lens of land. Interesting on almost every page.
3. Kate Christensen, Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites. More a memoir than a food memoir (which is how it is being marketed), the subtitle is thus better than the title. This is an excellent example of the “read smart books by people who are totally unlike you” principle. I finished it in one sitting, and it takes a place with The Great Man as one of my two favorite Christensen books.
4. John C. Williams (not the composer), “A Defense of Moderation in Monetary Policy” (pdf). A beautiful title and full of truth.
5. Reiner Stach, Kafka: The Years of Insight. Brings the author and his milieu to life to a remarkable degree and shows Kafka was a comic author after all.
The faculty are unhappy
Here is one recent report of falling salaries in public institutions, and, on the bright side, universities are having trouble filling some of those slots:
Public university professors don’t enter the profession to get rich. But some faculty are having trouble paying bills, and have even qualified for foods stamps, Olson said. “For somebody to go five to seven years beyond college to obtain a Ph.D. degree and to realize that you are in need of federal assistance to make ends meet — and that’s for a tenure-track position –” is devastating.
Adding what some view as insult to injury, a recently published database of public employee salaries shows that some professors earn less than their colleagues at local high schools without doctorates.
Yet how would they feel about actual poor people? The article focuses on University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and serves up the following numbers:
Faculty salaries averaged $67,000 for full professors; $57,100 for associate professors; and $51,900 for assistant professors during the 2012-13 academic year.
The evolution of dining in France
The French are known to prize good food. But almost a third of all restaurants serve dishes prepared largely or entirely elsewhere, says Synhorcat, a big group of hotel- and restaurant-owners. Xavier Denamur, a restaurateur and campaigner for openness who showers details on diners in his own establishments, says the proportion is far greater. Improbably long menus at small eateries are one giveaway.
The rising cost of raw materials and staff has put cooking from scratch beyond the reach of many restaurants. It is cheaper to buy frozen ingredients and ready-made dishes from industrial producers such as Métro, Brake or Davigel. Falling purchasing power adds to the pressure. More workers now bring sandwiches to the office, like the English they used to pity. Mobile vans peddling snacks are increasingly common. When people do eat in restaurants, they are often counting every cent.
Different studies produce different figures but all point to problems for restaurateurs. Synhorcat says that restaurant turnover fell by 5.5% in the year to March. According to Gira Conseil, a consultancy, almost three-quarters of all meals eaten outside the home are now in “super-cheap” establishments charging less than €10 ($13) a head, and fast food accounts for 54% of restaurant sales. The NPD Group, another consultancy, worries that the downturn is beginning to affect parts of the country that once seemed resistant, such as the south. Even fast-food joints, until recently growing rapidly, are beginning to feel the pinch.
That is from The Economist, here is more. The Washington Post has coverage too.
“Peak water” for the Middle East
The situation is most serious in the Middle East. According to [Lester] Brown: “Among the countries whose water supply has peaked and begun to decline are Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. By 2016 Saudi Arabia projects it will be importing some 15m tonnes of wheat, rice, corn and barley to feed its population of 30 million people. It is the first country to publicly project how aquifer depletion will shrink its grain harvest.
“The world is seeing the collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For the first time in history, grain production is dropping in a geographic region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Because of the failure of governments in the region to mesh population and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed and less irrigation water with which to feed them.”
Brown warns that Syria’s grain production peaked in 2002 and since then has dropped 30%; Iraq has dropped its grain production 33% since 2004; and production in Iran dropped 10% between 2007 and 2012 as its irrigation wells started to go dry.
“Iran is already in deep trouble. It is feeling the effects of shrinking water supplies from overpumping. Yemen is fast becoming a hydrological basket case. Grain production has fallen there by half over the last 35 years. By 2015 irrigated fields will be a rarity and the country will be importing virtually all of its grain.”
The article also offers a pessimistic assessment for China, India, and parts of the United States. Please note that Julian Simon fans should feel no need to rebel against these assessments, which are for resources with no or ill-defined property rights. When it comes to the Middle East and India, it is easy enough to see how institutional constraints might limit possible technological solutions to this problem.
Equip your robot with a Harris Tweed jacket
Robots are to be placed into the homes of people with dementia as part of a pilot on the Western Isles, but it is just one of many uses machines are being put to in Scotland amid a wider debate on robotics.
NHS Western Isles is the first health board in Scotland to try out Giraff.
The 1.5m (4ft 11in) tall, wheeled robots have a TV screen instead of a head.
A relative or carer can call up the Giraff with a computer from any location. Their face will appear on the screen allowing them to chat to the other person.
The operator can also drive the robot around the house to check that medication is being taken and that food is being eaten.
There is more here.
Assorted links
1. Me on Italian vs. French food (in German).
2. The culture that is England, at first I thought this was parody, I guess she won’t be friends with me. My favorite line was “I have to.” Killer video.
3. 44-pp. overview of some Chinese financial institutions.
5. Amazon is now raising the prices of many books, including university press books.
6. A profile of Warren Mosler and Modern Monetary Theory.
Bets and Beliefs
I fear that Tyler’s latest post on bets and beliefs will obfuscate more than clarify. Let’s clarify. There are two questions, do portfolios reveal beliefs? Do bets reveal beliefs?
Tyler has argued that portfolios reveal beliefs. This is false. If transaction costs were zero and there were an asset for every possible future state of the world then this would be true. Since transaction costs are not zero and there are many more states of the world than there are assets–even when we combine assets–portfolios do not reveal beliefs. Portfolios might reveal a few coarse beliefs but otherwise no go. Since most people have lots of beliefs about the future but don’t even have a portfolio (beyond human capital) this should be obvious.
Do bets reveal beliefs? Usually but not necessarily. Two people made bets with Noah Smith. Each thought Noah was an idiot for making the bet. Noah, however, had arbitraged so that he couldn’t lose. Clever Noah! Noah’s bets, either alone or in conjunction, did not reveal his beliefs. But is this the usual situation? No.
For the same reasons that portfolios don’t reveal beliefs, high transaction costs and few assets relative to states of the world, it’s going to be difficult to arbitrage all bets. Many bets in effect create a new and unique asset that can’t be easily duplicated and arbitraged away in other markets. I once bet Bryan as to what an expert would answer when asked a particular question. Hard to arbitrage that away.
I also agree with Bryan that the question is empirical and not simply theoretical. When I say that a bet is a tax on bullshit the implication is not just that bullshitters are more likely to lose their bets but also that a tax on bullshit reduces its supply. The betting tax causes people to think more carefully and to be more precise. When people are more careful and precise the quality of communication increases. As Adam Ozimek writes:
In a lot of writing in blogs it is unclear specifically what the writer is trying to say, and they seem to wish to convey an attitude about a certain position without actually having to make a particular criticism of it, or by making a much actual narrower criticism than rhetoric implies…It is useful to have betting because deciding clearly resolvable terms of a bet leads to specific claims…
Tyler argues that under some conditions betting won’t change what people say (under a wide range of portfolios…a matter of indifference… bets won’t be authentic) but Tyler doesn’t give us a specific, testable prediction. The empirical evidence, however, is that small bets do cause people to change what they say. This is one of the reasons why even small-bet, prediction markets work well.
Tyler has his reasons for not liking to bet but if you think one of those reasons is that he has already revealed his beliefs then you are surely not a loyal reader.
