Results for “food” 2044 found
Assorted links
1. More on the dim fate of solar power, and a lesson in the fallacy of mood affiliation.
2. Toward a theory of optimal swearing seigniorage.
3. Subsurface lakes on Europa?
4. Thai flood hacks.
The McRib Arbitrage
Why does the McRib appear and disappear at seemingly random intervals? An excellent post at The Awl has a plausible answer:
The McRib’s unique aspects and impermanence, many of us believe, make it seem a likely candidate for being a sort of arbitrage strategy on McDonald’s part….
If you can demonstrate that McDonald’s only introduces the sandwich when pork prices are lower than usual, then you’re but a couple logical steps from concluding that McDonald’s is essentially exploiting a market imbalance between what normal food producers are willing to pay for hog meat at certain times of the year, and what Americans are willing to pay for it once it is processed, molded into illogically anatomical shapes, and slathered in HFCS-rich BBQ sauce.
…The blue line is the price of hogs in America over the last decade, and the black lines represent approximate times when McDonald’s has reintroduced the McRib, nationwide or taken it on an almost-nationwide “Farewell Tour” (McD’s has been promising to get rid of the product for years now).
See the post for other theories.
Paths out of The Great Stagnation
Thankfully, Thingiverse user Tom Lombardi invented a solution for this age old problem. Enter the Lucky Charms Sifter.
According to Lombardi, the humble-looking 3D printed cup removes over 90 percent of all the cereal, leaving only the marshmallowy goodness. All the user has to do is pour Lucky Charms into the cup and give it a good shake. The precision-printed holes are just large enough for the whole-grain hamster food to fall through, while still retaining the slightly larger marshmallows.
Here is more, hat tip goes to ModeledBehavior. And via Rob Nelson, here is 3-D printing for pet hermit crab shells.
That all said, 3-D printing is unlikely to end up being a transformative technology; transportation costs for what it can produce are already fairly low. The printers may in some longer run be cheaper than UPS, truck, and commercial rail, but that’s a moderate savings only, albeit a nice one.
The most likely paths out of TGS — by far — are artificial intelligence and natural gas supply (with some chance of E-Cat). Smart machines will be most successful in their least romantic, furthest from hard AI, most mundane forms, starting with Siri and Watson. Natural gas and other energy source developments will likely make North America the cheap energy power for much of the next fifty years; this may improve the quality of our foreign policy as a collateral benefit.
The 99% 98%
The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday — because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
This is from the NYPost so take it with a grain of salt but still there is a lesson to be learned beyond the chortle.
Assorted links
1. MIE: “Why not create a chrome trout?” From Courtney.
2. The problem of female labor supply in Italy.
3. Simon Dale’s Hobbit House in Wales.
4. Scaring tourists with a stick for 60k a year? And here is growing etrogs.
5. Walking robot requires no power sources, just give it a push (video).
Somebody’s culture, I am not sure whose
Last week, restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, held a competition to eat the extra-hot Kismot Killer curry. Some of the competitive eaters were left writhing on the floor in agony, vomiting and fainting.
According to reports, two British Red Cross workers overseeing the event at the Kismot Indian restaurant in Edinburgh but became overwhelmed by the number of casualties and ambulances were called. Half of the 20 people who took part in the challenge dropped out after witnessing the first diners vomiting, collapsing, sweating and panting.
It turns out that eating a few pounds of the stuff probably can kill you; hat tip goes to Steve Silberman.
Where to eat in Naples
1. Friggitoria-Pizzeria Giuliano, Calata Trinia Maggiore 33, open at 7 a.m. or so, one of the best pizzas I’ve had, and for only four euros.
2. Mandara, Via Ponte di Tappia 90-92, doesn’t look like much, more of a deli than restaurant, order at the counter and mimic the choices of others. Go before the line heads out the door.
3. Il Piccolo Ristoro, Calata Porto di Massa, inside the port, not really on a street, the cabbies seem to know where it is, only a few tables, one of the best seafood meals I’ve had. Not outrageously expensive.
Recently I had two and a half days in Naples, following a meeting in Rome, and it is one of my favorite cities. To live in, it combines the worst of Europe and the developing world…to visit, it combines the best of Europe and the developing world.
100 Degree Chinese Cuisine
There is now a real Hunan restaurant in Fairfax, near Fair Oaks Mall, menu here, their web site is here, 3903 Fair Ridge Drive, Unit H, in the mall with the Harris Teeter. It attracts an almost exclusively Chinese clientele and, to my untrained eye, some of them seem to be the Uighur group which hangs out in Fairfax but does not (yet?) have a restaurant of its own.
This place is not cooking at the exalted level of Sichuan Pavilion in Rockville, but it is competitive with the other semi-authentic Chinese places in this region. I sampled five dishes and all were very good. I have yet to figure out the optimal dishes to order but I may post more when I do so. Recommended to anyone with an interest in real Chinese food.
Deviations from Benford’s Law over time, in U.S. accounting data
Jialan Wang writes:
So according to Benford’s law, accounting statements are getting less and less representative of what’s really going on inside of companies. The major reform that was passed after Enron and other major accounting standards barely made a dent.
There is much more at the link. If you are new to the party, Benford’s Law is that:
…in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit is 1 about 30% of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency, to the point where 9 as a first digit occurs less than 5% of the time. This distribution of first digits is the same as the widths of gridlines on the logarithmic scale.
There is more at the link or more here. Here are two previous MR posts on Benford’s Law.
The You Have Two Cows Challenge
No doubt you are familiar with the two cows guide to political philosophy.
- Socialism: You have t
wo cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
- Communism: You have two cows. You give them to the Government, and the Government then sells you some milk.
- Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
So under what type of ism do you have two cows but the government says that you can’t drink their milk? Whatever we call such an ism it may help to know that it is the one we live under. In a recent case in Wisconsin, as summarized by the judge (earlier case here):
Plaintiffs argue that they have a fundamental right to possess, use and enjoy their property and therefore have a fundamental right to own a cow, or a heard [sic] of cows, and to use their(s) in a manner that does not cause harm to third parties. They argue that they have a fundamental right to privacy to consume the food of their choice for themselves and their families and therefore a fundamental right to consume unpasteurized milk from their cows.
In response, Judge Fiedler wrote:
No, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;
No, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;
No, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice…
So MR readers, here is the challenge: You have two cows. The government says that you cannot drink their milk. What ___ism?
My suggestions?
Paternalism is the obvious choice but I am going to go with Animal Farmism.
Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?
Daniel Kahneman tells us:
When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&Ms makes you eat fewer of them. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not “preconsumed” in the same way.
Can you eat decently at an indecent restaurant?
I have a short piece in the NYT Sunday magazine on that question, here is one excerpt:
Moisture is a key element to consider. Eggs, traditionally deemed a safe choice in diners, are easy to overcook and thus are often served dry and tasteless. Chili and other slow-simmering dishes are a better option, because they can be left on the stove forever and still taste O.K. The initial recipe may not be optimal, but the restaurant’s mistakes probably won’t make them worse, and the spices in a good blend can overcome mediocre ingredients. Ribs, which are usually cooked mechanically with little threat of human error, can also sit for a long time at low heat and will almost certainly taste better than they look. At an Italian restaurant, spaghetti is a safer choice than lasagna, since a lot of the moisture is added ex post, through the sauce, making it harder to dry it out.
What are the side costs of trade with China?
There is a new study from David Autor, Gordon Hanson, and David Dorn:
The study rated every U.S. county for their manufacturers’ exposure to competition from China, and found that regions most exposed to China tended not only to lose more manufacturing jobs, but also to see overall employment decline. Areas with higher exposure also had larger increases in workers receiving unemployment insurance, food stamps and disability payments.
The authors calculate that the cost to the economy from the increased government payments amounts to one- to two-thirds of the gains from trade with China. In other words, a big portion of the ways trade with China has helped the U.S.—such as by providing inexpensive Chinese goods to consumers—has been wiped out. And that estimate doesn’t include any economic losses experienced by people who lost their jobs.
…Dartmouth College economist Douglas Irwin said the new research paints too bleak a picture. There are, he says, important benefits from trade that aren’t captured—because nobody has figured out how to measure them. For example, commodity-producing countries the U.S. exports to have been boosted by China’s growth, creating greater demand in those nations for U.S. goods. “But if we had more exports of (Caterpillar) heavy equipment to Australia, that’s not being measured” as a gain from trade with China, he says.
The original paper is here.
From the comments
Here’s a Hill poll on inflation, and here’s a Gallup poll, and here’s a Rasmussmen poll.
While all differ on the exact numbers, they agree in broad strokes. The median voter is highly worried about inflation. Democrats are worried less about inflation, but still quite a lot. Indpendents are virtually indistinguishable from Republicans in worrying a lot about inflation.
That means that the inflation/hard money bit from the GOP is not an appeal to the base. It’s actually a reach to the center.
Worrying about inflation may be wrong– and I think it is wrong, according to the data– but it’s an attempt to go after the median voter, not play to the base.
Scott Sumner and Arnold Kling have related comments, and most directly here is Scott Sumner again.
Lunch conversation on Iceland, wealth mark-downs, and national unity
A NYT piece from yesterday noted that Greece still may require a forty (!) percent mark-down in wealth/perceived wealth. Measured per capita Greek income is about 30k, for Bulgaria 14k, can Greece really be so much wealthier? It is no wonder that Greek politicians are reluctant to default and/or leave the eurozone. No matter how inevitable such courses of action may be, they are not political winners: “We pledge to cut your standard of living by forty percent, but unlike the other party, we’re going to do it right now!”
It was debated how high the mark-down must be for the United States; there was an estimate of 7-8 percent and another estimate of 3-4 percent. Ireland will have ended up facing quite a large mark-down.
How much of a mark-down has Iceland seen? I mean in terms of wealth not just per capita income. Do any of you know of figures? Their ability to “get their mark-down over with” is one fundamental reason for their turnaround. The loss is large but it is now behind them. Floating exchange rates don’t hurt either. As a quite small, fairly unified, previously used to hardship and bad fermented foods, extremely nationalist self-identifying kind of place, it is no surprise that Iceland has handled the markdown issue so well.
I find it useful to think about places in terms of how well they handle the issue of the wealth mark-down and how quickly they can get it behind them.