This Concludes Bratwurst Week

Stunning spring day today in London. The youngest and I went to Broadway Market, which was abuzz with cheer. The upside of mostly mediocre weather most of the time is that when a breezy, sunny, blue-skied, 21C day comes along, everyone's in a great mood. Got some flowers, some garlic-stuffed olives, 4 different salamis (duck, venison, garlic, extra-hot chorizo), and stopped by the bratwurst stand. The prices have increased to £3.80, but the sausages are still properly hefts brats -- still great value for money.

 

Professor John T. Harvey, TCU, on Govt Spending

I'm surprised to see it spelled out this clearly in Forbes of all places! Highly recommend: this great, easy-to-read post covering the basics of GDP and the relationship between private investment and government spending. I might carry around hardcopies of this and demand it be read and understood before agreeing to even discuss the economy socially. (Yes, I am well on my way to curmudgeonhood.)

Some choice excerpts:

The government’s plan? More layoffs and wage reductions. This is supposed to encourage entrepreneurs to take the risks about which they are reluctant at the moment. If that seems illogical to you, it’s because it is. It’s sheer lunacy.

OR

Since investment is a major driver of the business cycle, look at what happens:

fall in investment => fall in GDP => increase in government spending

The last entry at least partially compensates for the first, which makes recessions less severe and lengthy. This has dampened, if not eliminated, the effect of the private sector’s instability since WWII. And it works in reverse, too:

rise in investment => rise in GDP => decrease in government spending

Hence, as the economy grows, so the government budget tends toward balance (as it did at the end of our longest peacetime expansion in the 1990s).

But, and this is terribly important for today, the line of causation does not run in the opposite direction!!! It is not true that lowering government spending has a tendency to increase investment. Unfortunately, this appears to be the basis of a great deal of policy in Washington today (assuming there is any economic logic to it at all). Taking discretionary action to cut spending now will be an absolute disaster. We haven’t even started doing that with any gusto yet, and look at the results from 2011Q1. And, just today, President Obama signed a bill that cut $38 billion from the government budget, while the house passed one reducing government spending by $6.2 trillion over the next decade. This is absolute insanity.

What do these people think is going to happen?

Now *This* Is An Honest Brat

Which reminds me, I have enjoyed these bratwurst from the stand Broadway market, about double the size of "the bratwurst" in broadgate, and slightly cheaper to boot!

You Call That a Currywurst?

City lunches: In Broadgate Circle a new vendor, "the Bratwurst" has taken residence in a stand sadly vacated by what had been a decent place for burgers. But hey, bratwurst! Should be good! And that's really all they sell: plain or run through a nifty overengineered automatic sausage slicer and slathered with curry sauce. I tried the latter. The taste is fine, but it's terrible value for money, costing £4 for a meager bit of meat. Currywurst makes great train station food in Germany, and should really fill you up for not much money. For £4 they should be serving up about double their surprisingly small portion. In fact, not far away, nice little chip shop Alexander's (on Christopher Street, EC2) will server you a couple cumberland sausages for £4, each one of which looks heartier than the brat's brat. And it's not just me -- a few smaller, less American guys in the office had the same reaction. "That's it?" Hopefully they'll wise up because it would be nice to get some bratwurst outside over the summer.

Anyway, if you go to Alexander's (recommended!), get the fish -- really nice cod. Or go to Damascu Bite (on Shoreditch High Street, E1) for some satisfying shawerma. Or go to Fernando's (Devonshire Row, EC2), or K10 (Copthall Ave, EC2), or ....



[update 28th April:] Either I have tremendous influence, and possibly time-travel powers, or The Bratwurst has wised up a little. They are now offering a double portion of currywurst for £5.95. Not fabulous value by any stretch, but at least in the realm of reasonable.

Apple Is Not Tracking Your Every Move

Your iPhone might be. Apple isn't. Is the difference pedantic? I don't think so. Even ZDNet, whose writers should know better, made this mistake, claiming

Apple is not the first company to collect data without users knowing. Google fell in hot water in 2010 after admitting that it was collecting data from non password-protected Wi-Fi networks for three years as part of its Street View project.

Wrong. Apple is not collecting your data. Google was.


Every reporter who breathlessly repeated the story should have done a bit of fact-checking first. Anyone interested should read this.

1) Apple is not collecting this data
2) This hidden file is neither new nor secret
3) This "discovery" was published months ago.

 So what should Apple do? I believe Apple should do two things.

1. release a free app that wipes the log data on your iphone/ipad with a single button push
2. add a setting that allows you to disable tracking entirely

P.S. If everyone could just calm the fuck down, I'd appreciate it.

Non-Disposable Furniture

As I age, gracefully, into a transcendent state of wisdom and grace, I find comfort in the idea of things outlasting me. It's getting harder and harder for me to buy furniture that probably won't outlast me. I hate disposable furniture. Good furniture is expensive, even really simple pieces, if they are solid and built with joinery rather than hex bolts and staples. So pulling the trigger today on a couple of small tables and chairs was painful, but I feel better for having done it. I'll feel even better if they're still on active duty into their second or third decade.

Final PS on S&P BS

(I promise)

The Kansas City crowd writes it up much better than I ever could (well worth the read): You have more chance to be hit by lightening twice during your life than to experience a default of dollar-denominated sovereign US debt. The only really worrisome variable is the stupidity of US congress and its willingness to try to fix something that is not broken.

S&P P.S.

LOL Business Insider for the perfect summary

S&P

Perhaps inspired by Jesse Jackson, Jr.,  S&P issued a warning about US sovereign credit rating. This is the same ratings agency that gave AAA stamps of approval to toxic pools of subprime-backed crap that turned out to be worthless. But that's not the half of it. Does S&P think it's possible for the US to default? S&P should spend more time over at TC.

Keen Insight & Serious Thinking from Jesse Jackson Jr

March 2011

"Let me be clear about a few things. [iPads and Kindles] are revolutionizing our country — and they will fundamentally alter how we will educate our children."

April 2011

"[the Ipad is] probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs"

I can suggest some other targets if he wants to talk about destruction of wealth and jobs, but why bother? This is bafflingly daft stuff even by congressional standards of stupid.

George RR Martin: A Lack of Edits

I've just finished a stolen draft of book six of George RR Martin's "A Song of Endless Characters" series, A Lack of Edits. The first five books are: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and... I forget the fifth one... A Dance with Draco? A Maiming of Malfoys? Something like that.

This is exactly what I'm talking about when I go mental about the value of professional editing. The first book was great. By the second book, a feeling of dread set in... things were going nowhere, slowly. What had been delightful unpredictably in the first book now revealed itself to be a tiresome formula (find anyone sympathetic? prepare for the horrible maiming, or death, or series of unfortunate events). Dread at the appearance of new characters: please, no, not another point-of-view character to waste 300 pages on! The realization that almost no time is passing, and taking thousands of pages to do it. It's written like an open-ended TV series, which is probably fitting, given his background. So a soap opera, then. It seemed like a lot more at first. And I thought the third book was great, but by the end I'd lost all trust in the author, that he would finish it well or that he would finish it at all. So I haven't gone beyond the third. It's hard for me to stay with an author I no longer trust. Which is a shame, because he's got chops. There are some great characters and some excellent stories. Lock GRRM in a room with a zealous editor wielding a riding crop in one hand, a cattle prod in the other, and instructions to let him out only upon death or upon culling of, say, 1000 pages from the first 3 books and all of the fourth book.

Epic is not about the number of pages or the number of characters. Epic must yield catharsis, not just exhaustion.

An HBO series adaptation of the first book starts this week. From the previews, it looks great, and I will definitely be watching it. But I'm not sure I'll be reading any more.

Another Nice Flight on BA

Recently flew from ORD-LHR on BA on a brand-new Boeing 777-300. Sat in economy+ in seat designs I'd not experienced before. They were really nice. The screens were nicer than I've had before on any BA flight. The seat also had a couple full-plug power outlets, 2 powered USB ports [I should've brought more devices to recharge!], and a set of RCA video inputs in case you wanted to view your own content on the screen. How cool is that? The chair was pretty comfortable, actually. And the trays came out of the armrests (always better than folding down from the seat ahead). Very nicely done.

Shawafel!

Had an excellent lunch the other week in Stamford, CT, at Layla's.  I've been there before and always enjoyed the jovial feel of the place and the satisfying shawerma. A popular take-out place, it also has a casual dining room. This time, 3 of us sat down later in the lunch hour. The waiter suggested we just let him take care of us, so we put away the menus and before too long the food started covering the table top: a giant bowl of freshly made salad, some tabouleh, some baba ghanoush, really nice hummus, a bowl of mixed pickles, a bowl of homemade chili sauce, a mound of hot, freshly cooked falafel, a mound of mujadara, and then the meat: a giant platter of grilled lamb, marinated grilled chicken, and a heap of lamb shawerma with grilled onions. Family style and friendly, served with justified pride. A single, overly reasonable price was given for the whole thing, and we walked away full and happy. I wish more restaurants were like that.