Results for “food” 2044 found
Gas station tacos
R&R Tacqueria, 7894 Washington Blvd. (Rt.1); 410-799-0001, Elkridge, Maryland, 13 minutes north of the 495/95 intersection, look for the Shell sign.
This tacqueria is in a gas station, with two small counters and three chairs to sit on. It is the best huarache I have eaten, ever, including in Mexico. It is the best chile relleno I've had in the United States, ever. They serve among the best Mexican soups I have had, ever, and I have been to Mexico almost twenty times. I recommend the tacos al pastor as well. At first Yana and Natasha were skeptics ("Sometimes you exaggerate about food") but now they are converts and the takeaways have vanished. They even sell Mexican Coca-Cola and by the way the place is quite clean and nice, albeit cramped.
The highly intelligent proprietor is a former cargo pilot from Mexico City and speaks excellent English. The restaurant is called R&R after the names of his two sons.
For over twenty years I have sought such a place in the Washington, D.C. area and now I have one. For over twenty years people have been asking me how can they scratch this itch and now I have an answer. (The version of this post to appear on tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com will have photos of the food.)
Via Jodi Ettenberg, The Wall Street Journal reports on gas station tacos.
Assorted links
1. Following an entire cohort.
2. New Sichuan hot pot coming to GMU Arlington, right in the GMU building!
3. Systematically biased beliefs about political influence.
4. Anthony Bourdain visits Haiti (TV show).
5. The future of public buildings?
6. Ten movies about food, from Christiana Weber.
Facts about India
Four decades after the Green Revolution seemed to be solving India’s food problems, nearly half of Indian children age 5 or younger are malnourished.
And:
There is no agribusiness of the type known in the United States, with highly mechanized farms growing thousands of acres of food crops, because Indian laws and customs bar corporations from farming land directly for food crops. The laws also make it difficult to assemble large land holdings.
Yet even as India’s farming still depends on manual labor and the age-old vicissitudes of nature, demand for food has continued to rise – because of a growing population and rising incomes, especially in the middle and upper classes. As a result, India is importing ever greater amounts of some staples like beans and lentils (up 157 percent from 2004 to 2009) and cooking oil (up 68 percent in the same period).
The story is here.
Government is raising the value of a life
The Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a life at $9.1 million last year in proposing tighter restrictions on air pollution. The agency used numbers as low as $6.8 million during the George W. Bush administration.
The Food and Drug Administration declared that life was worth $7.9 million last year, up from $5 million in 2008, in proposing warning labels on cigarette packages featuring images of cancer victims.
The article is here. If the goal is to give current people what they want, arguably this makes sense and perhaps it does not go far enough. Death is…BAD. If the goal is to maximize real gdp per capita, or most other macroeconomic indicators, it makes sense to value human life at replacement cost (and here) and this policy change does not make sense. I'm not arguing for either standard and indeed I think they both lead to absurdities. Instead the point is this: theoretical ordinal welfare economics and applied welfare economics, as represented by wealth measures, do not coincide as much as many economists like to think. This gap becomes increasingly important as health care and safety provision increase, relative to the size of the economy as a whole.
What the Chinese have done is to neglect health care investments (until very recently) and basically maximize gdp growth. They wanted to have fewer people anyway, so why spend money to keep ailing people around? We find this horrible when presented in such explicit terms, and yet we admire their achievement of the end of growth maximization.
Is the cow a silo of option value?
I was struck by this argument, which I had never heard:
The overriding advantage of meat is that demand for it is elastic. People don't need it but they like it, and up to a point, however much you produce, they'll keep on buying it. The demand for cereals for human consumption, on the other hand, tends to be inelastic. People need their pound of grain a day, but they don't need much more, and they won't buy any more unless they have sufficient wealth to invest the grain in animals, either to produce higher value food, or else to keep it "on the hoof" for a rainy day (or a drought).
The existence of meat means that a farmer can sow wheat, barley, oats, beans, maize, and so on with reasonable confidence that, in the event of a good harvest, someone will buy it, because even if everybody has sufficient, it can be fed to animals. This dynamic is not restricted to a money economy. It works exactly the same for Melanesian subsistence farmers who can sow enough sweet potato and manioc to cover a bad year knowing that it is not a waste of effort, because in a good year the surplus can be fed to pigs.
Take the animals, the elastic element, out of the equation and the business of sowing grain suddenly become far more risky…This elementary matter of the need for a feed buffer fails to feature in most of the literature that is written about meat-eating and vegetarianism…
That quotation is from Simon Fairlie's quite interesting Meat: A Benign Extravagance.
As they used to say on the U. Chicago Ph.d. qualifying exams, true, false, or uncertain? And under what conditions?
The Pharaoh and the Commanding Heights
The Egyptian military is, for now, looking like a force for democratization. It should not be forgotten, however, that the military is an oligarchy which controls huge swaths of the Egyptian economy.
SFChronicle: It owns companies that sell everything from fire extinguishers and medical equipment to laptops, televisions, sewing machines, refrigerators, pots and pans, butane gas bottles, bottled water and olive oil.
Its holdings include vast tracts of land, including the Sharm el-Sheikh resort, where ex-President Hosni Mubarak now resides in one of his seaside palaces. Bread from its bakeries has helped head off food riots.
Another source of the military's untold wealth is its hold on one of this densely populated country's most precious commodities: public land, which is increasingly being converted into gated communities and resorts. The military has other advantages: it does not pay taxes and does not have to deal with the bureaucratic red tape that strangles the private sector.
…The revenue streams from its various holdings help the military maintain the lifestyle its officers have grown accustomed to, including an extensive network of luxurious social clubs as well as comfortable retirements – all of which helps ensure officer loyalty.
Not surprisingly, the military has opposed privatization and economic liberalization. The Egyptian military currently commands a great deal of respect in Egypt but what happens when a nascent democracy tries to reform an entrenched oligarchy?
Why are so many islanders obese?
Via Chris Bodenner, Joshua Keating reports:
What really sets the size of these islanders apart is the size of their islands: Tuvalu, Palau, Nauru, and the other countries on the obesity list are among the world's smallest countries in terms of land area and population. So a single tourist resort, fast-food chain, or trade deal has a much more profound effect on society than it would, say, in India or Nigeria.
Could it be something about Polynesians? After all, there are some hefty Maori in New Zealand and that is not a small island, especially not measured in economic terms. Mexico (not Polynesian, of course) also has a growing obesity problem and that cannot be attributed to the island factor. The same is true of the Persian Gulf states and there Keating suggests very rapid modernization as a culprit.
Keating discusses other factors. Don't Polynesians naturally eat a starchy diet? Are island groups more used to the prospect of famine, and thus their bodies store fat more readily? Being heavy is not low status on many of these islands. Here are some separate (speculative) claims about their voyaging history. Nauru is the heaviest island population, so maybe it has something to do with not having to work for a living, in this case due to phosphates. Cape Verde and Okinawa are islands, but their residents do not seem to be very heavy.
Don't residents of (some) small islands have weaker prospects of migrating to large cities and might that affect their dietary decisions? I think of rural isolation as a factor behind obesity, though Keating does not mention that. Being heavy is also one way of identifying with the local rather than the global culture, and islanders may be faced with stronger pressures to reaffirm their identities. I would like to see a comparison between Samoans who move to New Zealand and those who stay put.
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. Are these positive or negative graveyard externalities?
2. Mark Steckbeck on TGS, and Steve Horwitz. And Steve Sailer. More from Bryan.
3. The mud brick architecture of Yemen.
4. What are the bestsellers in the Netherlands? I just ordered book #1, which leads by a long way.
6. Prophets of the Marginal Revolution (hat tip to Bryan Caplan, who oddly implies I predicted incorrectly).
How do Maryland and Virginia differ?
From Jared Sylvester, a loyal TCEDG reader:
I was reading through your dining guide, looking for a place to go with my father this weekend. In your write up of Crisfields [http://tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com/?p=561] you said "The accompanying visit to Silver Spring is an object lesson in how Maryland and Virginia differ." I was wondering if you would mind blogging on that topic.
Let's restrict (most of) this to the adjacent parts of each state. The food says a lot: Maryland has kosher food and Caribbean food. Virginia has better Bolivian, Vietnamese, Korean, Afghan, Ethiopian, and Persian food. (Here is a new piece on minorities in Virginia.) Both have excellent Sichuan food. Both have very good El Salvadoran and Thai food. Neither has real barbecue. Maryland used to have better Indian food, now Virginia has much better Indian food, including dosas. Apart from Bethesda, Maryland has virtually no "fine dining." Maryland has many more Russians, albeit without a decent restaurant.
Virginia has Tysons Corner, Tysons Mall I and II, The Palm, and a Ritz-Carlton, or in other words a lot of tacky, revenue-generating corporate assets. Virginia has better and more consistent school systems. Virginia has better Beltway on- and off-ramps.
Bethesda is better integrated into DC than is any part of Virginia, with Arlington playing catch-up. Virginia has the airports, the Pentagon, a better business climate, and lower taxes.
The Pentagon and the military are central to my theory of why Virginia is such a well-run state. Virginia has a major cash cow, to provide employment and taxable incomes, yet unlike Alaska's oil revenue, it is not one that the state government can get its hands on beyond general sources of tax revenue. The Pentagon, as a natural asset, does not foster corruption or complacency in the Virginia state government. It is politically untouchable. It makes Virginia a conservative yet interventionist and technocratic state. Maryland has more inherited blight.
Virginia has more ugly colonial houses, and more arches and pillars, Maryland has more tacky old American box houses. I dislike ugly colonial.
Virginia feels more like an assortment of minorities working within an essentially Protestant framework. Maryland was originally founded as a Catholic colony.
Looking to the state as a whole, Virginia doesn't have a proper city; Norfolk and Virginia Beach are agglomerations based around what are traditionally non-urban rationales. I bet people in California, or for that matter Shenzhen, don't even know they are cities at all. The third largest city, Chesapeake, no one has heard of, or cares about, if not for the nearby Bay. Other parts of Maryland, such as you find along the Susquehanna, were long integrated into more northerly and westerly trade routes. Virginia's major waterways lead to the sea.
I've long lived in Virginia, and never wanted to live in Maryland, even if I could equalize the commute.
Assorted links
2. Arbitrage fail in the Canadian Lotto?
3. Carlos Slim: against charity.
4. Steve Pearlstein on TGS. And more on TGS.
5. Moon and Venus over Lichtenstein.
My favorite things Egypt
1. Novel: I like all of the Mahfouz I have read, but the Cairo Trilogy is the obvious pick. Here is a very useful list of someone's favorite Egyptian authors and novels.
2. Musical CD: The Music of Islam, vol.1: Al-Qahirah, Classical Music of Cairo, Egypt. The opening sweep of this is a stunner, and it shows both the Islamic and European influences on Egyptian music. Musicians of the Nile are a good group, there is Hamza El Din, and there is plenty of rai. What else? I can't say I actually enjoy listening to Um Kalthoum, but her voice and phrasing are impressive.
3. Non-fiction book, about: Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious. Few cities have a book this good. There is also Dream Palace of the Arabs and Tom Segev's 1967. Which again is the really good book on the 1973 War?
4. Movie, set in: Cairo Time. This recent Canadian film avoids cliche, brings modern Cairo to life, and is an alternative to many schlocky (but sometimes good) alternatives, such as The Mummy, Death on the Nile, Exodus, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so on. There is Agora. Egyptian cinema surely has masterpieces but I do not know them. If you're wondering, for books, I could not finish Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings.
5. Favorite food: I was impressed by the seafood restaurants on the promenade in Alexandria. Food in Cairo did not thrill me, though I never had a bad meal there.
6. Philosopher: Must I say Plotinus? I don't find him especially readable.
7. City: I enjoyed Alexandria, but I can't say I liked Cairo beyond the museum (much better than any Egyptian collection outside of Egypt) and the major mosques. The Sphinx bored me. The air pollution prevented me from walking for more than an hour and there was cement, cement. and more cement. The ride between Cairo and Alexandria was one of the ugliest, most uninspiring journeys of my life. The Egyptians were nice to me but I never had the sense that anything beautiful was being done with the country. Let's hope that changes.
8. Opera, about: Philip Glass, Akhnaten. But wait, there's also Aida, with Callas. And there's Handel's Israel in Egypt. Handel set a lot of his operas in Egypt, including Berenice and Giulio Cesare.
Diane Rehm is Egyptian-American but I don't know her show. The new biography of Cleopatra is smooth but the narratives made me suspicious. Was Euclid Egyptian?
Kuwaiti Gift Exchange
KUWAIT CITY–Kuwait's ruler is marking several key anniversaries by literally paying tribute – handing out 1,000 dinar ($3,559) grants and free food coupons for every citizen in the Gulf nation.
The state news agency KUNA reports Monday that Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah has ordered the gifts for all the estimated 1 million Kuwaiti citizens.
It even covers newborns until Feb. 1….The food program is expected to offer free staples such as rice, eggs and milk until March 2012.
Hmmm, what could account for this sudden urge to gift?
China fact (book) of the day
When it comes to the overall death toll, for instance, researchers so far have had to extrapolate from official population statistics…Their estimates range from 15 to 32 million excess deaths. But the public security reports compiled at the time, as well as the voluminous secret reports collated by party committees in the last months of the Great Leap Forward, show how inadequate these calculations are, pointing instead at a catastrophe of a much greater magnitude: this book shows that at least 45 million people died unnecessarily between 1958 and 1962.
That is from Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, which is one of the scariest books I have read. Here is another passage, I am not sure how well it is sourced:
Mao was delighted. As reports came in from all over the country about new records in cotton, rice, wheat or peanut production, he started wondering what to do with all the surplus food. On August 4 1958 in Xushui, flanked by Zhang Guozhong, surrounded by journalists, plodding through the fields in straw hat and cotton shoes, he beamed: "How are you going to eat so much grain? What are you going to do with the surplus?"
"We can exchange it for machinery," Zhang responded after a pause for thought.
[Showing a poor understanding of Say's Law] "But you are not the only one to have a surplus, others too have too much grain! Nobody will want your grain!" Mao shot back with a benevolent smile.
"We can make spirits of out of taro," suggested another cadre.
"But every county will make spirits! How many tonnes of spirits do we need? Mao mused. "With so much grain, in future you should plant less, work half time and spend the rest of your time on culture and leisurely pursuits, open schools and a university, don't you think?…You should eat more. Even five meals a day is fine!"
Here are some reviews of the book.
Assorted links
1. Is this evidence against Heckman? This?
2. More on the Hispanic paradox and life expectancy.
3. How to order Indian food in Hindi (video).
4. Paul Collier reviews Dambisa Moyo's statist prescriptions for America.
5. How much value do scientific superstars carry?
6. How much of libertarianism is cheap talk?
7. MLK day.