Chris Foulkes's Blog

Gatwick Express have decided than winter has arrived and turned the heating on. Sweltering on the train...

2011-09-01T17:59:00.001+01:00

Please sign our petition

2011-08-26T08:31:00.004+01:00

The future of the Royal Opera House has been put in doubt following a planning application by property developer Oakmayne. The company has submitted plans for an abattoir on the Covent Garden site which, if built, would sit opposite the Royal Opera House building and could pose a significant threat to the theatre's entertainment license. Oakmayne's attitude towards preserving the longevity of the theatre is perhaps best summed up by a comment from its chairman, Christopher Allen, who when questioned gave his opinion that "opera houses come and go".

We, the undersigned, disagree with you Christopher. And we refuse to just sit idly by and let this happen. The Royal Opera is not just a theatre. Millions of people have passed through our doors over the 180 years we have been open. 300,000 people visit us annually, bringing trade to Covent Garden and the surrounding area. We have always strived to create the moments that people live for, and we will continue to do so. We are the people that come here, the people that work here, the music that is played here and the lifelong bonds that are made here. If we lose the Royal Opera House, we are losing a vital piece of culture in this country. Theatres may have existed before Royal Opera House, but they were never the same afterwards.

Please sign our petition if you oppose Oakmayne’s planning application.

Abercrombie & Fitch pays older men to stop wearing their clothes

2011-08-17T13:13:00.002+01:00

On Tuesday, clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch said it would offer “substantial payment“ to overweight middle-aged men to stop wearing the brand.

"We are deeply concerned that the association of unattractive, older men with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that these people need to wear clothes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans", an Abercrombie & Fitch spokesperson said in a statement.

Abercrombie & Fitch is also no stranger to controversy. The all-American retailer has come under fire in the past for a range of topics ranging from negative stereotyping to sexually explicit material and employment practices.

Word Cloud

2011-07-13T09:10:00.001+01:00

Asparagus Risotto

2011-06-02T14:25:00.003+01:00

Asparagus Risotto

for 4 people

100g butter
1 small onion
8 fistfuls - 400g - arborio rice
2 bunches - 20 stalks of asparagus
500ml chicken or vegetable stock

Wash the asparagus and chop the stalks into 1cm pieces, leaving 4cm of the tips.

Melt a generous knob of butter in a heavy-based pan, add a chopped onion, and cook gently until translucent.

Add the rice (two handfuls per person) and toast it in the butter until it starts to brown.

Add a generous glass of dry white wine (this adds an acid note to the dish). Let the wine evaporate until the onion and rice are nearly dry then add a ladleful of stock and give it a good stir.

Add the asparagus then continue adding the stock, a ladleful at a time, stirring constantly, each time waiting for the liquid to be absorbed before adding the next ladleful. Carry on until the rice is soft but still firm.

Remove from the heat and allow it to rest for a couple of minutes. Then, stir in another generous knob of butter and some grated parmesan.

BBC News 'struggles' to invent royal wedding related headlines

2011-04-28T16:51:00.000+01:00

Foulkes's Law

2011-02-12T09:47:00.002Z

"When three or more are gathered together, and agree that something is undeniably true, they are usually wrong."

Chris Foulkes - 2011

Champagne Margaritas

2010-07-06T09:30:00.004+01:00

This is one of those cocktail recipes that should come with a warning—it's too easy to drink, even for those who aren't the biggest fans of tequila. The Champagne (or any other dry sparkling wine) rounds out the strong flavors of the tequila and lime, adding bubbles and a wonderfully round flavor that will most likely have you reaching for flute after flute.

The recipe advises mixing the margarita component and chilling it at least an hour in advance. Once it's mixed up (in pitchers for easy pouring), all that's left to do is rim the flutes with salt, top with Champagne, and enjoy.

Champagne Margaritas

- serves eight

Adapted from Fiesta at Rick's by Rick Bayless.

Ingredients

The finely grated zest (colored part only) from 1 lime
1 cup fresh lime juice
1 cup Cointreau
1 cup 100% agave silver tequila
Superfine sugar, if needed for adding sweetness
A half lime for moistening the glass rims
Coarse salt
1 bottle chilled brut Champagne or other sparkling wine

Procedure

1. Make the margarita mixture: In a pitcher, combine the lime zest, lime juice, Cointreau, and tequila. Taste the mixture: if you like the bracing flavor (it will be quite tart), leave the mixture as is; if it's too tart for you, stir in a little superfine sugar. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour.

2. Serve: Strain the mixture to remove the zest. Moisten the rims of eight 6-ounce Champagne glasses with the cut side of the lime half. Spread coarse salt on a small plate, then upend the glasses into the salt to crust the rims. Fill each glass halfway with the margarita (it'll take a generous 1/2 cup). Slowly fill the rest of the way with Champagne or sparkling wine, and hand to one of your lucky guests.

Felice Varini’s amazing illusions

2010-06-25T08:35:00.000+01:00

Another one of Felice Varini’s amazing illusions

Impossible Motion

2010-05-12T07:42:00.001+01:00

Another brilliantly executed 3D illusion.

Once again, the beauty of this type of illusion is that as you watch it, your brain "knows" it's a trick, but your eyes believe it completely.

Like the Red Queen, who in her youth managed to believe six impossible things before breakfast, we are all much more inclined to belive impossible things that we would care to admit.

Audio Illusion

2010-05-05T18:20:00.002+01:00

An audio illusion for once.

Play this video a few times - until the pitch of the sound becomes inaudible.

This is a neat example of a Shepard Tone - the illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch without ever changing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone

The impression of progress - where none in fact exists - is a common problem in IT projects...

Self-delusion

2010-05-04T19:44:00.001+01:00

The great thing about this illusion is that it makes no pretence at being anything other than an illusion.

The video starts off by showing you how the 3D illusion is created in 2D, then the camera pans round and shows you the illusion itself.

But you are still tricked!

This is a splendid demonstration of the way you can go into something - an IT project for example - fully aware of the traps and pitfalls you may encounter. But despite this awareness, you still fall into the first pit you stumble upon.

Cardiff Castle

2010-04-22T23:00:00.002+01:00

Diet

2010-04-18T17:21:00.002+01:00

I weighed myself last weekend and got a shock.

No food blogs for a bit I'm afraid, I'm on a diet.

Wine & Song

2010-04-13T21:23:00.008+01:00

A few days ago I was invited along to a odd-sounding event, to see how music effects wine tasting.

It struck me as a pretty obvious connection: given the right amount of claret even Schoenberg can sound tuneful. Nevertheless, in the spirit of pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge (as H.E.Hughes my old physics master used to say), and seeing as my diary was pretty empty at 5:30 on a Tuesday, I hoofed it over to the Henry Wood Hall in somewhere called The Borough to find out more.

The Borough is an odd area, near Guys Hospital and a big market affair. There seemed to be a lot of odd coves with ruffled hair, riding Italian motor scooters and talking loudly in strange, contrived Dick-Van-Dyke-style cockney accents. I have no idea what that is about.

Anyway, I found the hall in good time. It’s a disused church, now used as a gathering place for musicians when they’re not in the pub. Henry Wood was a musical chappie of some sorts, who married Princess Ourousov – an imposing Russian soprano that my great great uncle Bertie once had a fling with.

The event was hosted by some wine chaps by the name of Villa Maria who sound Italian but actually come from New Zealand. I must admit that I wasn’t aware that our New Zealand cousins were in to making wine. I’d assumed they were busy producing boot polish and those strange furry fruit that look so pretty when cut in half. In fact, a quick check in my Pears Cyclopaedia (the 1995 edition my aunt Elspeth have me when I went to work for the Home Office) tells me that they produce quite a lot of the stuff, as much as Switzerland in fact.

Villa Maria make a pretty broad range of wines, and the six we were served up were all very different, being made from grapes from all the different wine areas of New Zealand. My favourite was the crisp and lively Wairau Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2009, with the playful and citrusy Cellar Selection Riesling 2008 a close second.

Music was provided by some chaps from the London Philharmonic Orchestra who all seemed happy to help out, despite the pubs being open. They weren’t actually playing for us – union rules I guess, so the music was a selection of their recordings instead.

As well as the wine chappies and the musicians, there were a number of pretty young lasses who said they looked after PR. I assume that’s something to do with wine making, but I didn’t have the heart to ask.

It turned out that the idea wasn’t to test the effect of wine drinking on the music, rather the other way round – to see if certain types of music made the wine taste better. Once again, there seems to be an obvious link here. Rossini calls for spumante, Schoenberg for hemlock.

So we gave each of the wines the once over, then listened to some jolly pieces of music and tried to work out which tune matched a particular bottle. I diligently listened, supped and matched.

Then followed a general discussion, which boiled down to the musicians telling us how marvellous the music was, and choosing a wine that almost lived up to it, followed by the wine chappies telling us how marvellous the wine was, and choosing a piece of music that made them sound clever.

I have to admit, the conclusions weren’t altogether surprising – the jolly pieces being matched to the whites, the gloomy ones to the reds, with the rosé being best avoided altogether.

One final point: wine bods spit; musicians swallow.

Marmite Truffles

2010-04-12T19:53:00.003+01:00

It isn't often that you come across a new flavour combination that is both oddball and pleasant. Cooks striving for originality tend to let their enthusiasm overtake good sense. So when offered a marmite truffle at the recent Brighton chocolate festival my instinct was to avoid eye contact and move swiftly on. But my sense of adventure took over, and I tried a sample. I'm very pleased I did.

These marmite truffles are made by a charming lady called Sharon Clifford in her kitchen in Wales. They look like conventional posh chocs, and their initial flavour is pleasantly chocolatey, not gimmicky at all. In fact it takes a few seconds before you feel the roundness and richness of the marmite, and even when you do you don't think "Ah, marmite!" but more "Hmm, interesting".

Being a diligent type I got in touch with Sharon after the show to find out what prompted this level of chocolatey eccentricity. Sharon is of Indian/Persian descent, which would suggest exotic flavours, but not necessarily marmite. It appears that she borrowed the idea from Paul Young, but has made it her own.

Sharon will be at the Cowbridge Food and Drink festival later this year. If you can't wait that long, you can contact her at cocoamagicclifford@googlemail.com

Grown-up Rice Pudding

2010-04-05T19:47:00.001+01:00

Rice Pudding is one of those dishes that exists in endless varieties - all of them pretty much the same. Some add cardamom for a hint of the orient; others add egg for extra luxurious eggyness. Somehow they all retain a comforting familiarity.
But comfort food is for the nursery. Grown-ups should require something more complex, more challenging.
Adding complexity to something sweet and starchy isn't that easy. Sugar will easily overwhelm the cleverest constructions.
This recipe adds a the citrusy bitterness of orange-peel and the tricky edge of
caramel to bring Rice Pudding into adulthood.

Ingredients
The peel of 1/4 orange, finely diced
100g butter
100ml water
100g sugar
100g long grain rice
2 pints milk

Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed pan and add the orange peel and the water. Simmer for 30 minutes till the water has evaporated.
Add the sugar and heat gently until it starts to colour, stirring all the time so that the peel doesn't burn.
Add the rice and toast in the caramel for a minute, stirring all the time.
Now add the cold milk and simmer gently for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. The milk should be almost completely absorbed, leaving a rich, creamy pudding.
Serve immediately, or leave to cool in the pan.
If you re-heat the pudding, add more milk to get back to a creamy consistency.

Zabaglione al Campari

2010-03-22T19:44:00.004Z

Readers may detect a theme emerging here. Possibly bordering on the obsessive. My wife has.

Campari is a tricky ingredient. When warmed, the balance of flavours changes dramatically, with the bitterness coming through more strongly. The vibrant crimson also does strange things when mixed with other ingredients.

Despite all of this, Zabaglione al Campari almost works. It comes out a pale salmon colour, and is richly fragrant. Try it!

Per person: 1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon Campari

Use a bowl that you can place over a pan of boiling water…
Whisk the yolks and sugar until thick and pale yellow.
Add the Campari and whisk for another minute.
Heat over boiling water, stirring constantly until the zabaglione thickens.
Serve immediately.

Campari Mojito

2010-03-22T12:02:00.004Z

Campari is an unusual drink. It's a throwback to a time when local apothecaries would mix curative elixirs to fortify the body and mind.

These local apothecaries knew a thing or two about marketing. They knew that people expect their medicines to taste bad - it they tasted nice they couldn't be any good. They also knew that if you made them alcoholic then you would feel better, even if they didn't actually cure you of anything.

In the nineteenth century you could buy nostrums based on all sorts of weird and vile tasting substances. Most of these have disappeared, but some survive, although in different forms. Pimms used to be sold as a tonic. The juniper in gin promised all sorts of healthy benefits. Hops in beer were almost life-giving if you believed the blurb.

Campari - flavoured with chinotto, a small, bitter citrus fruit - is a good example. Initially marketed as a tonic in Milan, it is now a global brand. Its bitter flavour is softened with sugar and smoothed with alcohol. It is often used as a base for cocktails, where its bitter flavour and vibrant colour make it distinctive and striking.

Having sampled the range of Campari-based cocktails. my personal favourite is the Campari Mojito. Although the official recipe starts starts with sugar, I find the Campari is sweet enough.

Campari Mojito

Crush 1/2 lime with a couple of sprigs of mint in a tall glass to release the juices of the lime and the flavours of the mint. Add some crushed ice, a generous glug of Campari and top with soda water.

Crema Campari

2010-03-21T20:16:00.004Z

I had the good luck to visit Galleria Campari this week, a multimedia exhibition celebrating 150 years of the Campari brand, with particular focus on the famous artists who have contributed over the years.

There is a whole gallery dedicated to the work of Fortunato Depero, a futurist artist who created a huge range of artwork for the brand, and also designed the iconic, conical Campari Soda bottle.

Campari is a "Bitter" with its roots in the patent medicines and nostrums of the 17th century. These came in many styles and flavours, generally containing exotic and sometimes unpleasant herbs and spices, presumably on the "the worse it tastes the more good it does you".

The actual Campari recipe was developed in the late 19th century by Gaspare Campari and remains a closely guarded secret.

Campari is great in cocktails as it delivers a useful combination of bitterness, sweetness, complexity, and of course its trademark crimson colour.

In cooking, however, Campari is a bit of a challenge. Its bitterness takes few hostages, and its colour won't do much for anything green. But I have a few ideas...

My first recipe is a simple foil for the elixir itself. Pure white ricotta with a scoop of crème fraiche (for a hint of acidity) lightly sweetened with white sugar and slightly salted (to prevent cloying). Splashed with Campari and served in a white bowl, it was very effective. If I'd had a pomegranate to hand I would have garnished with a few seeds. But I didn't. Shame.

Nettle Risotto

2010-03-21T09:04:00.004Z

I was in Milan this week and tasted Risotto all'Ortica - Nettle Risotto for the first time.

It was a vibrant green, and had a pleasant, peppery flavour.

Never one to miss the chance of a free meal, armed with latex gloves and a bag, I went in search of nettles.

Before I had half filled my bag it was apparent that the sting in your common nettle is more than a match for latex gloves. Twelve hours later my fingers are still tingling. I'll wear marigolds next time.

Still, I managed to collect a fair bunch, choosing only the fresh new shoots with just two full leaves.

Back in the kitchen I washed them and picked out a surprising number of tiny snails, who clearly aren't worried by the stings.

The various recipes online disagree on the matter of pre-cooking the nettles. Some add them raw at the fry-the-onion-in-the-butter stage. Others blanch them first, chop them then add at the add-the-stock-ladle-by-ladle stage. I opted for the latter, mainly because I had seen all the snails and wanted to be sure I had got them all.

The result looked great, but lacked the peppery edge I had tasted in Milan. Maybe I should have left some of the snails in after all.

Risotto all'Ortica

Blanch the nettles in salted boiling water, drain and blitz in a food processor.

Melt 50g of butter in a heavy-based pan, add a chopped onion, and cook gently until translucent.

Add the rice (two handfuls per person) and toast it in the butter until it starts to brown.

Add a generous glass of dry white wine (this adds an acid note to the dish). Let the wine evaporate until the onion and rice are nearly dry, then start adding the stock, a ladleful at a time, stirring constantly, each time waiting for the liquid to be absorbed before adding the next ladleful.

After about 10 minutes, add the nettle purée, and carry on cooking, adding stock as you go, until the rice is soft but still firm.

Remove from the heat and allow it to rest for a couple of minutes. Then, using a wooden spoon, beat in a generous knob of butter and some grated parmesan.

I added a lightly poached egg on top. I'm not sure why.

Chilli & Lemon Marmalade

2010-02-12T20:27:00.002Z

January is the month when Seville oranges appear, we dust off Delia's recipes and make orange marmalade.

In February we get bored of bitter oranges, and wonder why, if they're so good, we don't use them for anything else.

So here's a much easier, quicker, and in my mind much more spectacular marmalade.

500g lemons

1l Water

1kg sugar

10 red thai chillies

Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a large pan.

Chuck the pips away.

(Lemons have plenty of pectin so you don't need to mess around with pips in muslin bags and whatnot.)

Shred the peel and add to the pan with the water.

Simmer for two hours.

Chop the chillis and add to the pan with the sugar.

Boil for 15 minutes then start checking for a set. (Delia will explain this bit far better than I can.)

When it's done, stop everything and wait for 10 minutes for things to cool down.

Ladle into jars.

Look forward to breakfast.

Candied Peel and Whisky Sours

2010-01-11T11:04:00.005Z

For those of you at a loss to occupy you kids and keep yourselves sane during this batch of inclement weather, here's the perfect recipe. It is seasonal, easy, and has the wonderful bonus of by-products that will make the most fantastic cocktail.

Candied Peel

6 lemons

4 oranges

3 grapefruit

(or a random collection of citrus fruit)

1kg sugar

1/2l water

Halve the fruit and squeeze out the juice - reserve this for later.

Simmer the fruit halves for three hours - or until tender.

Scoop out insides - the inner membranes and fibres but not the white pith - with a spoon. Bring the sugar and and water to the boil to make a syrup.

Boil the peel in the syrup for 1/2 hour then leave everything to cool down.

The easiest way to store the your Candied Peel is in a tupperware - syrup and all. It will keep for ages.

Now mix 5tbspof the reserved juice and 2 tbsp of syrup with 8tbsp whisky and a few ice cubes. Shake, strain and drink. Perfect whisky sours - bliss!

Brighton Pier at Sunset

2009-10-16T12:31:00.000+01:00

I took about 100 photos standing at the end of the groyne just to the west of the pier, then stitched the together using Microsoft ICE

The party's over

2009-10-08T18:29:00.003+01:00

The British political parties have just finished their series of conferences, and I’m ever more depressed by our political system. Sound-bite politics has turned the process into a collection of policy statements that pander to the lowest denominator rather than the challenges of government.

“We will cut public sector waste” – the other party hasn’t thought of this? Does waste only exist in the public sector? Is all waste bad?

“We will cut taxes” – will that make me better off? Will that make anyone better off?

“We will reduce the burden of government debt” – If debt is so bad why do we borrow to buy the houses we live in? Is all debt bad? Which debt?

“We will roll back the frontiers of the state” – I doubt anyone knows what that means.

All of these statements make good soundbites (I have to assume this is true) but barely stand up to a moment’s analysis.

How would our family function if I had to compete for my children’s votes in order to carry on parenting? How would I present my policies in a way that would appeal to my kids more that those of the competition? (If only someone else wanted the job...) What would my platform be if it had to win the approval of a bunch of teenagers with the attention span of a gnat?

Our political system is based on the parties assuming the electorate will behave like a bunch of teenagers with the analytical acuity of a pebble.

Are we stuck with this system? I guess so.

How depressing.

Pumpkin Pie

2009-10-07T09:48:00.003+01:00

Here's the very latest recipe – get baking!

Pumpkin Pie

I've always loved pumpkin pie – it's a great combination of comfort food and spice, just what you need at this time of year. But all too often pumpkin pies tend to be little more than a red custard tart with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

Over the years I've tried endless combinations. Here's my current "perfect pumpkin pie".

Which Pumpkin?
The most important aspect of a good pumpkin pie is - not surprisingly - the pumpkin. Choose badly and you may as well not bother...

My main tip, is don't bother with the pumpkins that are sold in supermarkets for carving at Halloween. These are bred for easy scooping, not great cooking. Scoop away by all means and amuse the kids, but throw away the insides - and find something better.
Most varieties sold with eating in mind will make a good pie. my favourites are:

*Potimarron* This is a bright orange, onion-shaped variety with a slight chestnutty flavour.
*Potiron rouge vif d'Étampes* The most widely grown variety in France, with a dense, orange flesh.
*Hungarian Blue* This has silvery-blue skin, and firm orange flesh. It's also great in soups.

750g pumpkin flesh
Cut the pumpkin flesh into chunks and cook with a splash of water over a low heat until tender. Let it cool, then drain any excess water.

The crust:

250g plain flour
50g whole, unpeeled almonds,
170g butter
50g sugar
Put all the crust ingredients into a food processor and zap them until there is no more plain flour in sight and the mixture resembles fresh breadcrumbs. Don't try to blend it into a dough.
Pour the mixture into a buttered, 30cm (12") pie dish. Press the mixture around the sides with your fingers to make the rim, then press the rest into the bottom - I use a tablespoon for this bit.

The filling:

Now it's all about the combination of spices. I use fresh ginger, some star anise and a little chilli. These make the filling lovely and zingy, with a slight acidic note that's very pleasing.

10g cinnamon stick
1/2 nutmeg
5g cloves
1 star anise
1 dry chilli
50g fresh ginger
100g sugar
3 large eggs
250g crème fraiche
200ml milk

Zap the spices in a grinder till finely powdered. Add to the pumpkin.
Whizz the fresh ginger and a tablespoon of the sugar in a blender till it resembles mushed apple. Add that to the pumpkin too.

Add all the remaining ingredients to the pumpkin, and zap with a hand blender until thoroughly blended. The result should be quite thick.

and now, the pie
Pour the filling into the unbaked pie-crust, being careful not to overflow, or get any filling on the rim.
Bake in a pre-hearted oven at 180C for 30-40 minutes, or until starting to brown on top.
Remove from the oven and cool.

Serve cold - or chilled - with a dollop of crème fraiche.

Please sponsor me!!! It's for a good cause, really...

2009-10-02T19:14:00.001+01:00

Hi!

I'm taking part in the Royal Parks (Half) Marathon 2009 on 11/10/2009 to raise money a local charity - Help a London Child - and I'd really appreciate your support.

I know times are hard and budgets are stretched, but every little contribution helps.

To make it easy – if rather impersonal – you can donate through the justgiving website: http://www.justgiving.com/chrisfoulkes

Or, if you prefer, you can find the charity here and donate directly!

Thanks for your support!

Chris

PS: I may come back to you for contributions to my medical bills after the half marathon...

Healthcare Costs, Housing and Bubbles

2009-07-14T11:14:00.002+01:00

There seems to be a huge debate raging in the USA over the total cost of healthcare to the US economy. Most of the discussion seems to go along the lines of "we could bring down the cost of healthcare by doing xxx" where xxx could be more rationing, better IT systems, better prevention, less waste (whatever that is), and more...

However, it strikes me that healthcare costs in the US are simply expanding to consume the amount of money available, in much the same way as housing does in the UK.

Over here (in the UK) whenever we have more money - earned or borrowed - we tend to "invest" that money in property, with the result that property prices rise to a point where this consumes all the available cash.

Why do we brits do this? I'm sure there are lots of cultural reasons, but there's also a basic reason - we've got to put our spare cash somewhere, and investing in property feels like a good bet, especially with a constrained supply (it's hard to build new houses in the UK) and ever expanding demand.

Whatever the reason behind it, those not on the property ladder are priced out of the market and are generally excluded from the party.

Housing in the US doesn't seem to provide this sponge-like service, possibly because the supply of housing in the US is not constrained in the same way. So where does the spare cash go? Well, it seems that a lot of it goes into healthcare. If you have spare case, where better to invest it than in you health?

So in the same bubble-like way, healthcare spending expands and soaks up the available cash. The excesses, as seen through our eyes, of US healthcare (over-treatment, luxurious facilities and so on) are not causes of the high cost, but merely indicators. The money absorbed has to be spent somewhere, so why not on an extra scan, or an atrium?

If this analysis is right - and please correct me if you think I'm wrong - then any attempts by the Obama administration to reduce overall healthcare spending are doomed to fail.

The only way of reducing overall healthcare spending in the US is to redirect excess cash somewhere else. This would represent a significant cultural shift.

On a positive note, at least in the US you end up with comfier hospitals and straighter teeth. All we get in the UK is more expensive housing.

Discuss...

Philosophy Bites

2009-07-14T11:05:00.004+01:00

This great podcast provides a brief introduction to the more interesting areas of philosophical thought and debate. Each episode is an interview with a specialist on a specific topic, and gives a great inroduction to the area.

My daily cycle to work has become far more educational since I discovered it!

http://www.nigelwarburton.typepad.com/philosophy_bites/

Bacon Vodka

2009-05-17T11:39:00.000+01:00

(I haven't tried this yet - but I will!)

Fry three strips of bacon.
Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. If you're a little OCD, trim the ends of the bacon if they're too tall to fit in the jar. If you're sloppy and excited, just pile in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps.
As an optional kicker, add crushed black peppercorns.
Fill the jar with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for three weeks. No need to refrigerate.
At the end of three weeks, place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Strain out the fats through a coffee filter and you're left with a pale yellow bacon vodka.
Decant into a nice swine-shaped bottle and pig out!

Lasagne

2009-05-09T15:59:00.002+01:00

Many cooks claim to have the ‘ultimate’ lasagne recipe – often passed down by some since-departed Italian ancestor. This strikes me as being rather daft – lasagne is such a varied dish that there can be no ‘ultimate’ recipe.

There are, however, plenty of dreadful recipes, often resulting in a plate of greasy, stodgy, overcooked pasta with pieces of rubbery mince and rancid cheese.

Before I give you my recipe, it’s worth reflecting for a second on what you want your lasagne to be.

For me, a great lasagne is made with fresh egg pasta - still ‘al-dente’ - layered with a beef ragù and a tomato sauce, and enriched with a light, nutmeg infused béchamel sauce.

So this gives us the list of the main elements:

Fresh egg lasagne
Beef ragù
Tomato sauce
Béchamel sauce

Fresh egg lasagne

You can make your own lasagne – it’s easier than you think. Or you can be lazy and use the dried variety.

Beef ragù

This is not made with mince. Ever.

Think of it as a thick beef stew, and apply the same principles.

Start with some good quality stewing beef – I like to use shin as it has the best flavour. You could use flank or chuck steak.

Fry the chunks of beef - in a large saucepan - in oive oil till browned, then chuck in some chopped onion/carrot/celery, a good glug (half a bottle) of red wine, salt, a couple of dried chillies and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar.

Cover, and simmer very, very gently for three hours.

That’s it.

Make more than you need for the lasagne – it freezes well, and can be used for all sorts of dishes.

Tomato sauce

Start with fresh tomatoes by all means, but only if you have a load of ripe, flavoursome Italian style tomatoes. If all you have is some red cardboard things from a greenhouse in Holland, don’t bother. I use a can of chopped Italian tomatoes and add a chopped shallot. I don’t even cook it.

Béchamel sauce

Look it up.

Lasagne

To assemble the lasagne, start with a rectangular dish and cover the base with tomato sauce. Cover with a layer of lasagne, then a layer of ragù, more lasagne, more tomato etc.

Finish with a layer of lasagne which you then cover with the béchamel.

Finally, dot with butter and sprinkle with fresh parmesan.

Bake in a hot oven – 180C – for 40 minutes.

Enjoy.

If you have left overs, try them cold. It’s nicer than you imagine.

Ridiculous patents....

2009-05-09T14:30:00.002+01:00

IBM have applied for a patent for the brilliant invention of... the 40 minute meeting.
Apparently they feel that the idea of keeping meetings short is so innnovative that they should have the right to charge people who host such meetings.
I'm not quite sure how this would work in practice. I can imagine having to pay a small fee at the start of each 40min meeting. But what if it overruns? If you go on for an extra two minutes do you get your money back?
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220090119148%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20090119148&RS=DN/20090119148

The Foulkes Blog

2009-04-16T11:00:00.005+01:00

Three days into the new term, and the kids have started a blog.

You can find it at:

http://thefoulkesfamily.blogspot.com/

After one hour of home schooling Mait is looking decidedly frazzled...

2009-04-14T10:05:00.000+01:00

Read this, and you will be able to throw "Macro-endogenous risk" into your next dinner party conversation

2009-04-12T19:47:00.002+01:00

Useless finance, harmful finance and useful finance

Willem Buiter

Useless finance

A derivative is a contingent claim whose payoff depends on the performance of some other financial instrument or security. For instance, an American equity call option gives the purchaser of the call the right (but not the obligation) to buy a share of equity from the issuer or writer of the call option at or before some future date at a price determined today. A credit default swap (CDS) is a credit derivative contract between two (counter)parties in which the holder makes periodic payments to the issuer in return for a payoff if the underlying financial instrument specified in the contract defaults.

A derivative contract is formally identical to a lottery, a (simple or compound) bet or gamble. Like any financial claim, any derivative is an ‘inside asset’ - it is in zero net supply. Because pay-offs associated with a derivative contract are functions of observable properties of other financial claims (prices, interest rates, default states), the derivative contract either re-packages existing underlying uncertainty or creates additional ‘artificial’ uncertainty. It would create additional extraneous uncertainty if it added some noise of its own to the fundamental, exogenous uncertainty that is presumably reflected in the features of the underlying security that determine the pay-offs of the derivative contract.

If the creation and trading of derivatives were costless, derivatives result in zero-sum redistributions of wealth between the issuers and the owners of the derivative contracts. Costless derivatives would be redundant if markets were complete. When markets are incomplete, as they are in our unfortunate universe, introducing derivatives can either lead to an increase or to a reduction in efficiency and social welfare. Lower efficiency and social welfare are possible even if creating and trading derivatives were costless. Derivatives may improve the allocation of risk, but there is no guarantee that they will. It is my contention that the unbridled explosion of certain categories of derivatives has done considerable harm, and that it is necessary to regulate all derivatives trading.

How can creating lotteries, even if they only mirror fundamental underlying uncertainty, be welfare increasing? The usual argument involves examples where there is a given quantum of ‘objective’ or ‘exogenous’ uncertainty in the world, e.g. uncertainty about endowments, technology and tastes (all assumed exogenous - only economists would treat technology and taste as exogenous, of course!). Markets for risk trading are incomplete and creating derivatives markets does not alter the objective/exogenous uncertainty in the world. Creating and trading derivatives is costless.

In such a world one can imagine a pension fund that wishes to hold default risk-free 10 year government securities, but unable to find them in the market, instead holding 10 year AAA corporate bonds and CDS to cover the default risk of these corporate securities. Provided the writer of the CDS is creditworthy, the pension fund could achieve its preferred portfolio mix. If the writer of the CDS has the appropriate capital structure and balance sheet, it could be both willing and able to bear the default risk on the corporate bonds than the pension fund. For the lottery created by a derivative contract to be welfare-increasing, it will have to produce a positive monetary pay-off for the purchaser of the derivative in exactly those ‘states of nature’ where the purchaser will be worst off, while at the same time ensuring that the corresponding negative monetary pay-off for the writer of the derivative does not hurt the writer of the derivative too badly.

It would of course be more direct to draw up contracts contingent on the exogenous uncertainty directly. If the pension fund’s ‘endowment’ were to be negatively correlated with that of some other legal entity, and if the two endowments could be observed and verified, an endowment-sharing rule could be specified that would make both parties better off. You would not start looking for contracts specifying payments that are contingent on endogenous risk, such as default risk or the behaviour of some price or interest rate.

Derivatives, insurance and gambling

Consider the CDS. The purchaser pays a premium to the writer of a CDS. That is the price of the lottery ticket, or the price of the betting slip. If the underlying security specified in the contract defaults, the writer of the CDS pays the owner of the CDS a specified amount of money. That’s the lottery prize, or the winnings of the bet. In the UK where there are more legal forms of gambling than in most other countries, many conventional financial instruments or securities have been ‘re-engineered’ as formal bets. Spread betting on exchange rates, interest rates, stock prices and now also house price indices is a popular form of investment. The reason is that earnings from gambling are not taxed. The government presumably does not tax the gains and losses from gambling because (ignoring the value added of the gambling industry) gambling winnings equal gambling losses, so if the tax code allows loss offsets, there is not much point (ignoring progressivity of taxation & other complications) in taxing the gains and losses from gambling.

Derivatives can be used to provide insurance (paying a premium to buy protection against a possible loss) or to gamble (paying a premium to acquire the opportunity to benefit from a possible gain). CDS can provide either insurance against loss or an opportunity to gamble. This is because the buyer of a CDS does not need to own the underlying security or other form of credit exposure. The buyer does not have to suffer any loss from the default event and may in fact benefit from it.

When purchasing an insurance contract, the insured party is generally expected to have an insurable interest in the event against which he takes out insurance. This simply means that he cannot be better off if the insured against event occurs than if it does not occur. Determining what constitutes an insurable interest is often complicated in practice, but simple in principle: you have an insurable interest if, when (a) the future contingency you insure against occurs and (b) the insurance contract performs (something you cannot necessarily count on, without assistance from the tax payer, if you buy your CDS from AIG), you are not better off than you would be if the insured-against future contingency did not occur.

Clearly, CDS contracts don’t require an insurable interest to be present. Many other derivatives likewise don’t require an insurable interest to be present. Short selling a share of common stock in the hope/expectation of a fall in the price of the equity without either owning or borrowing the stock (naked short selling) is an example of a derivative contract without an insurable interest.

Why should the state care about gambling through derivative contracts?

Harmful finance

(1) Gambling is addictive

Like all forms of gambling (deliberate risk-seeking), gambling in the derivatives markets can be addictive. This may create a paternalism-based argument for regulating, restricting or even banning the activity. Having observed derivatives writers, purchasers and traders in action, it is clear that the thrill of the gamble is part of the motivation behind this activity. The monetary gains and losses figure prominently, of course, but the bungee-jumping, sky-diving, tight-rope-walking-without-a-net dimensions of derivatives trading definitely play a role. It cannot be a coincidence that there are so many more male than female traders and other operators in the financial markets. Testosterone is not underrepresented in the trading room. And the thrill of taking a wide-open position can be addictive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gamblers Anonymous had a special chapter for derivatives gambling.

I am generically underwhelmed by arguments for protecting compos mentis adults against themselves based on paternalism, but the list of arguments would not be complete without it.

(2) Moral hazard or micro-level endogenous risk.

This is the familiar argument already mentioned before, that if the insured party (the purchaser of a CDS, for instance) can influence the likelihood of the insured-against contingency (the default of the underlying security) occurring without the writer of the insurance contract (the issuer of the CDS) being aware of this, there is an obvious case of market failure and potential source of inefficiency. It’s also likely to be an illegal form of market manipulation.

(3) Derivative contracts as “bearer lottery tickets”

Unlike most conventional lotteries, the lottery tickets created as part of many derivatives contracts are traded in secondary markets, sometimes over the counter (OTC markets), sometimes on organised exchanges. These lottery tickets or betting slips are not just traded after they are issued (sold by the writer in the ‘primary issue market’), most of these derivative contracts are bearer securities: their ownership is not registered. The owner is anonymous. Listed common stock, by contrast, is an example of what I have called a ‘registered security’. There is an ownership register, which is, at least in principle, in the public domain. Clearly, establishing the beneficial ownership of an equity share may not be a simple matter of looking in the shareowners register in the jurisdiction where stock is listed, but with bearer securities the task is hopeless.

The writer of the derivative contract does not in general know the identity of the current owner of the contract. If the writer does not know this, the supervisor and regulator, or the state agency in charge of macro-prudential supervision (typically the central bank) does not know it either. There is therefore absolutely no way to determine whether the current distribution of the ownership of derivative contracts is systemically stabilising or destabilising, whether it is too concentrated or too dispersed. When a notional gross $60 trillion worth of CDS outstanding at the peak (yes, I know it’s ‘only’ $30 trillion now and much of it is ‘offsetting’ in some ill-defined way) and possibly around $400 trillion gross outstanding of total derivatives, we are talking ignorance on a cosmic scale.

(4) Risk-seeking by the over-confident

Even if the secondary markets for derivatives functioned properly (no bubbles, no liquidity seizures, no wide-spread defaults), these secondary markets can, like the primary issue market, redistribute the additional risk represented by any derivative either in a way that improves the ultimate allocation and sharing of risk or worsens it. Once a new derivative market is created, this market can either be used to hedge existing risk or to take on additional risk. I have seen no reliable statistics on the identities of the counterparties in the leading derivatives markets. My best guess is that most of the activity is not between households and financial intermediaries or between non-financial enterprises and financial intermediaries, but among financial intermediaries, mainly among different banking or shadow-banking player. Much of this trading appears to be driven by overconfidence and hubris. I have yet to meet a trader who did not believe that he or she could not beat the market. Because collectively these traders effectively are the market, they are collectively irrational, as they cannot beat themselves. So the risk ends up being concentrated not among those most capable of bearing it, but among those most willing to bear it - those most confident of being able to bear it and profit from it.

(5) Churning

The collective hubris of the banking sector (broadly defined to include all the shadow-banking sector institutions like hedge funds, private equity funds, SIVs, conduits, other investment funds, AIG-style insurance companies etc.) means that enormous volumes of bets are placed on the behaviour of endogenous variables. The first consequence of this is that, since derivatives trading is not costless, scarce skilled resources are diverted to what are not even games of pure redistribution. Instead these resources are diverted towards games involving the redistribution of a social pie that shrinks as more players enter the game.

The inefficient redistribution of risk that can be the by-product of the creation of new derivatives markets and their inadequate regulation can also affect the real economy through an increase in the scope and severity of defaults. Defaults, insolvency and bankruptcy are key components of a market economy based on property rights. There involve more than a redistribution of property rights (both income and control rights). They also destroy real resources. The zero-sum redistribution characteristic of derivatives contracts in a frictionless world becomes a negative-sum redistribution when default and insolvency is involved. There is a fundamental asymmetry in the market game between winners and losers: there is no such thing as super-solvency for winners. But there is such a thing as insolvency for losers, if the losses are large enough.

The easiest solution to this churning problem would be to restrict derivatives trading to insurance, pure and simple. The party purchasing the insurance should be able to demonstrate an insurable interest. CDS could only be bought and sold in combination with a matching amount of the underlying security. Ideally, it ought to be possible to for me to buy a CDS by demonstrating an insurable interest in terms of my “utility”, i.e. by demonstrating that, should the underlying security default, I would be worse off in one way or other, not necessarily because I own the underlying security. In practice, this would be wide open to abuse and manipulation.

(6) Macro-endogenous risk

Financial markets are inefficient in any of the ways specified by James Tobin in a great 1984 paper - information arbitrage efficiency, fundamental valuation efficiency, functional efficiency or Arrow-Debreu full insurance efficiency.[1] Financial markets even often are technically inefficient. A market is technically or trading efficient if it is liquid and competitive, that is, it is possible to buy or sell large quantities with very low transaction costs, at little or no notice and without a significant impact on the market price. We have seen many examples, from the ABS markets and the commercial paper markets to the interbank markets of massive and persistent failures of technical or trading efficiency.

Even in those financial markets that are reasonably technically efficient, like the US stock market, the foreign exchange markets and the government debt markets, Tobin saw frequent departures from efficiency in the less restricted senses of the word. He accepted that financial markets possessed what he called ‘information arbitrage efficiency’ that is, that they were informationally efficient in the weak and semi-strong sense. You cannot systematically make money trading on the basis of generally available public information. Clearly, however, trading profitably on the basis of insider information is possible.

He did not believe that financial markets consistently possessed ‘fundamental valuation efficiency’: financial asset prices do not necessarily reflect the rational expectations of the future payments to which the asset gives title. Key financial markets, including the stock market, the long-term debt market and the foreign exchange market are characterised both by excess volatility and persistent misalignments, that is, prices deviating persistently from fundamental valuations.

Tobin also contested the notion that the financial markets delivered ‘value for money’ in the social sense. “the services of the system do not come cheap. An immense amount of activity takes place, and considerable resources are devoted to it.” (Tobin [1984, p. 284]). Tobin referred to this aspect of efficiency as ‘functional efficiency’. Finally, the system of financial markets can be efficient in the technical, information arbitrage, fundamental valuation and functional senses without possessing what Tobin called Arrow-Debreu full insurance efficiency, that is, without supporting Pareto-efficient economy-wide outcomes. The reason is that real world financial markets interact with labour and goods markets that are inefficient in every sense of the word.

When financial markets are inefficient, the distinction between fundamental, exogenous variables and endogenous variables disappears. CDS prices can become quasi-autonomous drivers of the bond prices. The tail can wag the dog. The redistributions of wealth associated with the execution of derivatives contracts can trigger margin calls, mark-to-market revaluations of assets and liabilities, forced liquidations of illiquid asset holdings through fire-sales in dysfunctional markets, defaults and bankruptcies. Activities in derivatives markets, including futures markets, can feed back on sport markets and real production, consumption and storage decisions.

Unbridled derivatives markets may be liquid, but the question is, to what purpose? If, as I believe, there is no economic rationale for ‘naked’ CDS positions (that is, CDS that do not insure an open default position in the underlying security), then liquidity of the CDS market only serves those who want to trade naked CDS. This, in my view, only wastes real resources through (a) churning and (b) unnecessary bankruptcies.

Useful finance

I want to end on an upbeat note. I believe that effective and efficient financial intermediation is a necessary condition for prosperity. To those who doubt this, I recommend a reading of two books about the true microfoundations of financial intermediation, Hernando de Soto’s, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, New York: Basic Books (2000) Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust, by Elena Panaritis (Palgrave MacMillan 2007). If you have only time for one, read the shorter work by Elena Panaritis. It describes the fascinating story of how personal possessions (characterised through informal, insecure property rights) were turned into secure property rights and thence into productive capital through a World Bank project in Peru. The book shows the importance of local knowledge and of a deep understanding of the institutional prerequisites for a successful market economy based on collateralisable wealth (especially real estate). To raise the quality of the rule of law in the property sector to the point small businesses can credibly offer land and other real estate as collateral for formal sector finance requires a formal titling authority, a state capable of reliably maintaining property records, a functional judicial system, corruption levels bounded from above etc.

The world described in these books, where the foundations of a productive market economy are being put in place, appears light years removed from the world of Wall Street and the City of London. In Peru, access to formal sector finance on reasonable terms thanks to the newly created ability to offer collateral and perfect security interest, has lifted many out of grinding poverty. In Wall Street and the City of London, massive resources and lobbying power were devoted to turning complex, long-term relationships into tradable securities - preferably into tradable bearer securities, even when the informational preconditions for this transformation to be effective were not satisfied. Increasingly, as in the case of bearer instruments like mortgage-backed securities for instance, the ultimate issuer and the current owner of the instrument knew nothing about each other. And even with simpler bearer securities, most of the time no-one knows who the current owner is, not even the supervisor and regulator.

The endless churning of contingent claims, including derivatives, when the purchaser has no identifiable insurable interest, turns financial intermediation into a market-mediated betting shop. Then the betting slips become bearer securities and are themselves traded, either OTC or on organised exchanges, and the derivative transactions volumes expand to dwarf the transactions in the markets for the underlying financial claims (let alone the markets for the underlying real resources). At that point, the betting tip of the financial tail of the real economy dog does all the wagging. It does not create value but redistributes it in a way that consumes real resources and exposes the real economy to unnecessary risk. It’s time to tame the tiger.

[1] Tobin, James [1984], “On the Efficiency of the Financial System”, Fred Hirsch Memorial Lecture, New York, Lloyds Bank Review, No. 153, July, pp. 1-15, reprinted in Tobin [1987], Policies for Prosperity; Essays in a Keynesian Mode, Edited by Peter M. Jackson, Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton, Sussex. pp. 282-296.

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Easter 2003 - in Kerry

2009-04-12T17:57:00.000+01:00

Chris's very slow roast shoulder of lamb

2009-04-12T17:15:00.003+01:00

Take a shoulder of lamb and lots of fresh rosemary.
Put the shoulder of lamb on top of the rosemary in a baking tray.
Bake in an 70C oven for 12 hours.
Eat.

Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Experience

2009-04-12T13:19:00.000+01:00

Consensus

2009-01-20T10:46:00.002Z

Leadership

2009-01-19T09:02:00.002Z

Teamwork

2009-01-18T19:41:00.003Z

Experience

2009-01-17T18:06:00.001Z

Why You're Going to Love Paying to Drive on Roads That Used to Be Free

2009-01-06T17:41:00.000Z

Why You’re Going to Love Paying to Drive on Roads That Used to Be Free
By Eric A. Morris
A Guest Post

To end the scourge of traffic congestion, Julius Caesar banned most carts from the streets of Rome during daylight hours. It didn’t work — traffic jams just shifted to dusk. Two thousand years later, we have put a man on the moon and developed garments infinitely more practical than the toga, but we seem little nearer to solving the congestion problem.

If you live in a city, particularly a large one, you probably need little convincing that traffic congestion is frustrating and wasteful. According to the Texas Transportation Institute, the average American urban traveler lost 38 hours, nearly one full work week, to congestion in 2005. And congestion is getting worse, not better; urban travellers in 1982 were delayed only 14 hours that year.

Americans want action, but unfortunately there aren’t too many great ideas about what that action might be. As Anthony Downs’s excellent book Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping With Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion chronicles, most of the proposed solutions are too difficult to implement, won’t work, or both.

Fortunately, there is one remedy which is both doable and largely guaranteed to succeed. In the space of a year or two we could have you zipping along the 405 or the LIE at the height of rush hour at a comfortable 55 miles per hour.

There’s just one small problem with this silver bullet for congestion: many people seem to prefer the werewolf. Despite its merits, this policy, which is known as “congestion pricing,” “value pricing,” or “variable tolling,” is not an easy political sell.

For decades, economists and other transportation thinkers have advocated imposing tolls that vary with congestion levels on roadways. Simply put, the more congestion, the higher the toll, until the congestion goes away.

To many people, this sounds like a scheme by mustache-twirling bureaucrats and their academic apologists to fleece them out of their hard-earned cash. Why should drivers have to pay to use roads their tax dollars have already paid for? Won’t the remaining free roads be swamped as drivers are forced off the tolled roads? Won’t the working-class and poor be the victims here, as the tolled routes turn into “Lexus lanes”?

And besides, adopting this policy would mean listening to economists, and who wants to do that?

There’s a real problem with this logic, which is that, on its own terms, it makes perfect sense (except for the listening to economists part). Opponents of tolls are certainly not stupid, and their arguments deserve serious consideration. But in the end, their concerns are largely overblown, and the benefits of tolling swamp the potential costs.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to convey this because the theory behind tolling is somewhat complex and counterintuitive. This is too bad, because variable tolling is an excellent public policy. Here’s why: t
the basic economic theory is that when you give out something valuable — in this case, road space — for less than its true value, shortages result.

Ultimately, there’s no free lunch; instead of paying with money, you pay with the effort and time needed to acquire the good. Think of Soviet shoppers spending their lives in endless queues to purchase artificially low-priced but exceedingly scarce goods. Then think of Americans who can fulfil nearly any consumerist fantasy quickly but at a monetary cost. Free but congested roads have left us shivering on the streets of Moscow.

To consider it another way, delay is an externality imposed by drivers on their peers. By driving onto a busy road and contributing to congestion, drivers slow the speeds of others — but they never have to pay for it, at least not directly. In the end, of course, everybody pays, because as we impose congestion on others, others impose it on us. This degenerates into a game that nobody can win.

Markets work best when externalities are internalized: i.e., you pay for the hassle you inflict on others. I’ve blogged on the externalities inherent in driving on this blog, and Levitt and Dubner have done so here.

Using tolls to help internalize the congestion externality would somewhat reduce the number of trips made on the most congested roads at the peak usage periods; some trips would be moved to less congested times and routes, and others would be foregone entirely. This way we would cut down on the congestion costs we impose on each other.

Granted, tolls cannot fully cope with accidents and other incidents, which are major causes of delay. But pricing can largely eliminate chronic, recurring congestion. No matter how high the demand for a road, there is a level of toll that will keep it flowing freely.

To make tolling truly effective, the price must be right. Too high a price drives away too many cars and the road does not function at its capacity. Too low a price and congestion isn’t licked.

The best solution is to vary the tolls in real time based on an analysis of current traffic conditions. Pilot toll projects on roads (like the I-394 in Minnesota and the I-15 in Southern California) use sensors embedded in the pavement to monitor the numbers and speeds of vehicles on the facility.

A simple computer program then determines the number of cars that should be allowed in. The computer then calculates the level of toll that will attract that number of cars — and no more. Prices are then updated every few minutes on electronic message signs. Hi-tech transponders and antenna arrays make waiting at toll booths a thing of the past.

The bottom line is that speeds are kept high (over 45 m.p.h.), and throughput is higher than when vehicles are allowed to crowd all at once onto roadways at rush hour, slowing traffic to a crawl (more on how this works in a minute).

To maximize efficiency, economists would like to price all travel, starting with the freeways. But given that elected officials have no burning desire to lose their jobs, a more realistic option, for now, is to toll just some freeway lanes that are either new capacity or underused carpool lanes. The other lanes would be left free — and congested. Drivers will then have a choice: wait or pay. Granted, neither is ideal. But right now drivers have no choice at all.

What’s the bottom line here? The state of Washington recently opened congestion-priced lanes on its State Route 167. The peak toll in the first month of operation (reached on the evening of Wednesday, May 21) was $5.75. I know, I know, you would never pay such an exorbitant amount when America has taught you that free roads are your birthright. But that money bought Washington drivers a 27-minute time savings. Is a half hour of your time worth $6?

I think I already know the answer, and it is “it depends.” Most people’s value of time varies widely depending on their activities on any given day. Late for picking the kids up from daycare? Paying $6 to save a half hour is an incredible bargain. Have to clean the house? The longer your trip home takes, the better. Tolling will introduce a new level of flexibility and freedom into your life, giving you the power to tailor your travel costs to fit your schedule.

But is this fair? Haven’t we already paid for these roads with our tax dollars? Won’t the wealthy buy their way out of congestion, while the rest of us are stuck? And won’t conditions in the free lanes deteriorate as they are packed with all the drivers who have fled the toll lanes?

These are perfectly legitimate and important concerns. But I should warn you: toll advocates are a pretty dogged bunch, and they have an answer to everything. I’ll let you know their (quite convincing) responses to these questions in my next post.

Cock Cheese

2009-01-05T20:45:00.000Z

Mexican Toilet Signs

2008-12-17T13:21:00.000Z

Winners

2008-12-15T13:21:00.001Z

A new mascot?

2008-12-15T13:18:00.000Z

The Zero-Profit Software Syndrome

2008-12-08T05:54:00.000Z

It is an accepted economic principle that when the cost of entry to a market drops to zero, the profitability of that market also drops to zero.

Put another way, when the cost of entry to a market is high, the existing players in the market can form effective cartels and defend high profit margins - General Electric in the US is a perfect example of this strategy, focusing on industries with prohibitive entry costs: aircraft engines, medical systems, etc. But as the costs of entry erode, cartels disintegrate and profits disappear.

So what happens if you are a major player in an industry where the cost of entry is disappearing? How do you survive? The only strategy that seems to work is Marketing. Replace the "technical" cost of entry with a "marketing" cost of entry. Spend huge amounts of marketing dollars to convince potential customers that your product is somehow different, and force your competitors to spend equivalent marketing dollars to challenge you. That way the cartels are safe.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams, in his book "The Dilbert Future" made the following prediction:

In the future, all barriers to entry will go away and companies will be forced to form what I call "confusopolies".

Confusopoly: A group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price.

So Dilbert's Confusopolies are just the usual marketing performance, focused on desperation.

The business software market seems to have reached the Confusopoly stage. Development tools and environments are vastly more productive than they were a couple of years ago, and Open Source software is now becoming respectable in the business environment. This means that in any given application niche, a new company can develop a new and attractive competitive product at minimal cost. This competition will drive down the price of software until, even with massively productive development tools, it becomes uneconomic to invest in further development.

So what to do?

The obvious strategy is to invest in Marketing. Marketing led companies will confuse the off of their customers and make a fortune – or so the theory goes. But as well as being sad, I believe this strategy is also doomed to fail. Why? Well, marketing doesn't come cheap, and as in all walks of life, most money will be misspent. Customers will eventually spot the fact that most of the money they believe should be spent of new product releases is instead being spent on navel fluff.

But what else is there?

I'm not sure that anyone has a good answer to this question yet. But Amovada is going to have a good go at working it out. Watch this space!

Insect Sushi - Yum!

2008-11-27T13:55:00.001Z

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/3526527/Insect-sushi-creepy-crawly-cuisine.html

Smirk

2008-11-25T08:45:00.000Z

The Art of Amovada - Facecast (TM)

2008-11-23T08:40:00.002Z

Thank you to everyone who attended Amovada's first facecast (TM). By all accounts it was a huge success. Sir Clement Tidy's presentation was clear, insightful and amusing and the ensuing Q&A session, that took the discussion into some very challenging areas, was truly memorable.

For those of you who may wish to repeat the experience, or to share it with friends and colleagues, a downloadable version will be available from the Amovada website.

We have already received much positive feedback on the event. If you haven't already provided yours, and if you didn't manage to collect a form at the end of the event (sorry - we didn't anticipate such huge demand) we would really like to hear from you.

The areas of feedback we are particularly interested in are listed below.

We will schedule further facecasts (TM) in the near future. Amanda White, Amovada's marketing guru, will host the second in the series. You will receive your invitation shortly.

Thanks again for helping create a new generation of collaborative knowledge sharing!

Chris Foulkes
founder and CEO

Feedback Topics

Content:
* presentation
* Q&A

Format
* quality of broadcast
* technical issues experienced

Venue
* quantity/quality of drinks
* quantity/quality of canapés

Attendance
* quality of audience
* networking opportunities

Other
* dress code
* communications

Binary Birthday

2008-11-20T11:30:00.001Z

The only birthday candle you'll ever need. A binary birthday candle. It consists of a single candle with seven wicks, where the wicks that are lit represent the birthday individual's age in binary. This single candle design works flawlessly to represent any age from 1 to 127, never requiring anyone below the age of 127 to blow out more than a mere six candles at a time.

Amovada Update

2008-11-11T09:29:00.001Z

We've updated the Amovada web site. Check it out here: www.amovada.com
All feedback appreciated!

Domino Logic

2008-11-03T11:06:00.001Z

How nerdy is this?

Pumpkin Pie - Stop Press

2008-10-31T11:13:00.002Z

Last week I thought I'd got the pumpking pie nailed. This week I tweaked the recipe slightly, and it is better still.
I used fresh ginger, added some star anise and a little chili. That made the filling lovely and zingy, with a slight acidic note that was very pleasing.
I also resuced the quantity of almonds in the crust - which made it slightly less intrusive.
I'm off to make another one right away!

Chris's Even More Perfect Pumpkin Pie
the pumpkin:
750g pumpkin flesh
Cut the pumpkin flesh into chunks and cook with a splash of water over a low heat until tender. Let it cool, then drain any excess water.

the crust:
250g plain flour
50g whole, unpeeled almonds,
170g butter
50g sugar
Put all the crust ingredients into a food processor and zap them until there is no more plain flour in sight and the mixture resembles fresh breadcrumbs. Don't try to blend it into a dough.
Pour the mixture into a buttered, 30cm (12") pie dish. Press the mixture around the sides with your fingers to make the rim, then press the rest into the bottom - I use a tablespoon for this bit.

the filling:
10g cinnamon stick
1/2 nutmeg
5g cloves
1 star anise
1 dry chili
50g fresh ginger
100g sugar
3 large eggs
250g creme fraiche
200ml milk

Zap the spices in a grinder till finely powdered. Add to the pumpkin.
Whizz the fresh ginger and a tablespoon of the sugar in a blender till it resembles musged apple. Add that to the pumpkin too.

Add all the remaining ingredients to the pumpkin, and zap with a hand blender until thouroughly blended. The result should be quite thick.

and now, the pie
Pour the filling into the unbaked pie-crust, being careful not to overflow, or get any filling on the rim.
Bake in a pre-hearted oven at 180C for 30-40 minutes, or until starting to brown on top.
Remove from the oven and cool.
Serve cold - or chilled - with a dollop of creme fraiche.

Enjoy!

Brighton Kite Surfers 2

2008-10-26T09:19:00.004Z

If you go to the Photosynth website you can watch the slide-show full-screen...

Brighton Kite Surfers - Photosynth

2008-10-25T14:17:00.001+01:00

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

2008-10-25T05:33:00.000+01:00

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

Pumpkin Pie

2008-10-24T05:10:00.009+01:00

Those of you who know me well - or at all in fact - will be aware that at this time of the year I always become obsessed with the recipe for the perferct Pumpkin Pie.

This year, with the benefit of advancing age, extensive travel around the USA, and a stroke of genius, I think I've finally cracked it.

Which Pumpkin?
The most important aspect of a good pumpkin pie is - not surprisingly - the pumpkin. Choose badly and you may as well not bother...

My main tip, is don't bother with the pumpkins that are sold in supermakets for carving at halloween. These are bred for easy scooping, not great cooking. Scoop away by all means and amuse the kids, but throw away the insides - and find something better.
Most varieties sold with eating in mind will make a good pie. my favourites are:

*Potimarron* This is a bright orange, onion-shaped variety with a slight chestnutty flavour.
*Potiron rouge vif d'Étampes* The most widely grown variety in France, with a dense, orange flesh.
*Hungarian Blue* This has silvery-blue skin, and firm orange flesh. It's also great in soups.

The Crust
Too many pies make do with a dreary, floury crust that becomes soggy as soon as the pie comes out of the oven. Having tried many alternatives in my tireless quest, I think the almond biscuit crust is pretty well perfect. And what's more, it's dead easy to make - you just zap all the ingredients in a blender and press the resulting crumby mixture into the pie dish - no rolling required.

So, here we go...

Chris's Perfect Pumpkin Pie
the pumpkin:
750g pumpkin flesh

Cut the pumpkin flesh into chunks and cook with a splash of water over a low heat until tender. Let it cool, then drain any excess water.

for the crust:
200g plain flour
75g whole, unpeeled almonds,
170g butter
75g sugar

Put all the crust ingredients into a food processor and zap them until there is no more plain flour in sight and the mixture resembles fresh breadcrumbs. Don't try to blend it into a dough.
Pour the mixture into a buttered, 30cm (12") pie dish. Press the mixture around the sides with your fingers to make the rim, then press the rest into the bottom - I use a tablespoon for this bit.

the filling:
100g sugar
3 large eggs
250g creme fraiche
200ml milk
1tsp powdered ginger
1tsp cinnamon
1tsp grated nutmeg
1/2tsp ground cloves

Add all the filling ingredients to the cooked pumpkin, and zap with a hand blender until thouroughly blended. The result should be quite thick.

and now, the pie
Pour the filling into the unbaked pie-crust, being careful not to overflow, or get any filling on the rim.
Bake in a pre-hearted oven at 180C for 30-40 minutes, or until starting to brown on top.
Remove from the oven and cool.
Serve cold - or chilled - with a dollop of creme fraiche.
Enjoy!

Financial Crisis Explained - Finally...

2008-10-08T07:57:00.000+01:00

Tim Foulkes is Doctor Who

2008-10-05T02:43:00.001+01:00

Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males

2008-10-04T13:25:00.002+01:00

A topic destined for much further research...

Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males
The Journal of Medical Hypotheses, 71(2), 2008.
In which we learn that a trip to the pharmacy is not always necessary.

Nasal congestion is defined by the blockage of the nasal passages usually due to membranes lining the nose becoming swollen from inflamed blood vessels [1]. This occurs when the nasal blood vessels expand in response to exercise, cold air, spicy food, even stress. Common causes of nasal congestion are common cold, influenza, Hay fever and chronic sinusitis [1], [2] and [3]. It impairs the natural human drive for nasal breathing and leads to lower self-esteem and to impaired quality of life [1]. There is a host of conservative treatments, including decongestant pharmacotherapy, antiallergy measures, nasal dilation devices and several surgical procedures [1] and [2], but it is still a symptom that is difficult to treat.
Decongestants are the main pharmacologic agents for the treatment of nasal congestion and act by stimulating α-adrenergic sympathetic nervous system. This leads to vasoconstriction of the nasal blood vessels and subsequent alleviation of the symptoms. However, oral or topical use of decongestants can have adverse effects of sympathetic stimulation such as hypertension. Furthermore, if used for more than two or three days, they can actually make congestion worse [4] and [5].
Herein, the author would like to provide a new treatment strategy for the treatment of nasal congestion in mature men. It is known that sexual arousal in men is followed by penile erection and subsequent ejaculation. Ejaculation has two phases: emission and ejaculation proper. The emission phase of the ejaculatory reflex is under control of the sympathetic nervous system, while the ejaculatory phase is under control of a spinal reflex at the level of the spinal nerves S2-4 via the pudendal nerve. A refractory period succeeds the ejaculation, in which the sympathetic nervous system counteracts the effects of the parasympathetic nervous system [6] and [7]. As it is seen, ejaculation can be used as a potential treatment of nasal congestion because its emission phase provides a sympathetic stimulation and subsequent vasoconstriction and nasal decongestion. Also, the refractory period serves as a sympathetic reservoir and maintains the decongestive state for a considerable while. This method does not wish to have the adverse effects of pharmaceutical decongestants because it is a physiologic stimulation of the sympathetic system in the body. According to the current idea, sexual intercourse or masturbation is proposed in the cases of nasal congestion in mature men. It can be done time-to-time to alleviate the congestion and the patient can adjust the number of intercourses or masturbations depending on the severity of the symptoms. This hypothesis suggests a unique treatment of nasal congestion because it uses a physiological mechanism of the human body for encountering the problem.

Beware of trying to do good with other people's money

2008-10-03T16:16:00.002+01:00

A great quote from the Wall Street Journal.

Read Russel Roberts' analysis of how the US government stoked mania here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122298982558700341.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Tim Foulkes - Ace Reporter

2008-10-03T10:47:00.001+01:00

Free Markets? Regulation?

2008-09-29T19:32:00.002+01:00

A very lucid article by Steven Horwitz on the current financial mess...

An Open Letter to my Friends on the Left
Steven Horwitz
Department of EconomicsSt. Lawrence Universitysghorwitz@stlawu.edu
September 28, 2008

My friends,
In the last week or two, I have heard frequently from you that the current financial mess has been caused by the failures of free markets and deregulation. I have heard from you that the lust after profits, any profits, that is central to free markets is at the core of our problems. And I have heard from you that only significant government intervention into financial markets can cure these problems, perhaps once and for all. I ask of you for the next few minutes to, in the words of Oliver Cromwell, consider that you may be mistaken. Consider that both the diagnosis and the cure might be equally mistaken.
Consider instead that the problems of this mess were caused by the very kinds of government regulation that you now propose. Consider instead that effects of the profit motive that you decry depend upon the incentives that institutions, regulations, and policies create, which in this case led profit-seekers to do great damage. Consider instead that the regulations that may have been the cause were supported by, as they have often been throughout US history, the very firms being regulated, mostly because they worked to said firms' benefit, even as they screwed the rest of us. Consider all of this as you ask for more of the same in the name of fixing the problem. And finally, consider why you would ever imagine that those with wealth and power wouldn't rig a new regulatory process in their favor.
One of the biggest confusions in the current mess is the claim that it is the result of greed. The problem with that explanation is that greed is always a feature of human interaction. It always has been. Why, all of a sudden, has greed produced so much harm? And why only in one sector of the economy? After all, isn't there plenty of greed elsewhere? Firms are indeed profit seekers. And they will seek after profit where the institutional incentives are such that profit is available. In a free market, firms profit by providing the goods that consumers want at prices they are willing to pay. (My friends, don't stop reading there even if you disagree - now you know how I feel when you claim this mess is a failure of free markets - at least finish this paragraph.) However, regulations and policies and even the rhetoric of powerful political actors can change the incentives to profit. Regulations can make it harder for firms to minimize their risk by requiring that they make loans to marginal borrowers. Government institutions can encourage banks to take on extra risk by offering an implicit government guarantee if those risks fail. Policies can direct self-interest into activities that only serve corporate profits, not the public.
Many of you have rightly criticized the ethanol mandate, which made it profitable for corn growers to switch from growing corn for food to corn for fuel, leading to higher food prices worldwide. What's interesting is that you rightly blamed the policy and did not blame greed and the profit motive! The current financial mess is precisely analogous.
No free market economist thinks "greed is always good." What we think is good are institutions that play to the self-interest of private actors by rewarding them for serving the public, not just themselves. We believe that's what genuinely free markets do. Market exchanges are mutually beneficial. When the law messes up by either poorly defining the rules of the game or trying to override them through regulation, self-interested behavior is no longer economically mutually beneficial. The private sector then profits by serving narrow political ends rather than serving the public. In such cases, greed leads to bad consequences. But it's bad not because it's greed/self-interest rather because the institutional context within which it operates channels self-interest in socially unproductive ways.
This, my friends, is exactly what has brought us to the mess we are now in.
To call the housing and credit crisis a failure of the free market or the product of unregulated greed is to overlook the myriad government regulations, policies, and political pronouncements that have both reduced the "freedom" of this market and channeled self-interest in ways that have produced disastrous consequences, both intended and unintended. Let me briefly recap goverment's starring role in our little drama.
For starters, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "government sponsored enterprises". Though technically privately owned, they have particular privileges granted by the government, they are overseen by Congress, and, most importantly, they have operated with a clear promise that if they failed, they would be bailed out. Hardly a "free market." All the players in the mortgage market knew this from early on. In the early 1990s, Congress eased Fannie and Freddie's lending requirements (to 1/4th the capital required by regular commercial banks) so as to increase their ability to lend to poor areas. Congress also created a regulatory agency to oversee them, but this agency also had to reapply to Congress for its budget each year (no other financial regulator must do so), assuring that it would tell Congress exactly what it wanted to hear: "things are fine." In 1995, Fannie and Freddie were given permission to enter the subprime market and regulators began to crack down on banks who were not lending enough to distressed areas. Several attempts were made to rein in Fannie and Freddie, but Congress didn't have the votes to do so, especially with both organizations making significant campaign contributions to members of both parties. Even the New York Times as far back as 1999 saw exactly what might happen thanks to this very unfree market, warning of a need to bailout Fannie and Freddie if the housing market dropped.
Complicating matters further was the 1994 renewal/revision of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The CRA requires banks to to make a certain percentage of their loans within their local communities, especially when those communities are economically disadvantaged. In addition, Congress explicitly directed Fannie and Freddie to expand their lending to borrowers with marginal credit as a way of expanding homeownership. What all of these did together was to create an enormous profit and political incentives for banks and Fannie and Freddie to lend more to riskier low-income borrowers. However well-intentioned the attempts were to extend homeownership to more Americans, forcing banks to do so and artificially lowering the costs of doing so are a huge part of the problem we now find ourselves in.
At the same time, home prices were rising making those who had taken on large mortgages with small down payments feel as though they could handle them and inspiring a whole variety of new mortagage instruments. What's interesting is that the rise in prices affected most strongly cities with stricter land-use regulations, which also explains the fact that not every city was affected to the same degree by the rising home values. These regulations prevented certain kinds of land from being used for homes, pushing the rising demand for housing (fueled by the considerations above) into a slowly responding supply of land. The result was rapidly rising prices. In those areas with less stringent land-use regulations, the housing price boom's effect was much smaller. Again, it was regulation, not free markets, that drove the search for profits and was a key contributor to the rising home prices that fueled the lending spree.
While all of this was happpening, the Federal Reserve, nominally private but granted enormous monopoly privileges by government, was pumping in the credit and driving interest rates lower and lower. This influx of credit further fueled the borrowing binge. With plenty of funds available, thanks to your friendly monopoly central bank (hardly the free market at work), banks could afford to continue to lend riskier and riskier.
The final chapter of the story is that in 2004 and 2005, following the accounting scandals at Freddie, both Freddie and Fannie paid penance to Congress by agreeing to expand their lending to low-income customers. Both agreed to acquire greater amounts of subprime and Alt-A loans, sending the green light to banks to originate them. From 2004 to 2006, the percentage of loans in those riskier categories grew from 8% to 20% of all US mortgage originations. And the quality of these loans were dropping too: downpayments were getting progressively smaller and more and more loans carried low starter interest rates that would adjust upward later on. The banks were taking on riskier borrowers, but knew they had a guaranteed buyer for those loans in Fannie and Freddie, back, of course, by us taxpayers. Yes, banks were "greedy" for new customers and riskier loans, but they were responding to incentives created by well-intentioned but misguided government interventions. It is these interventions that are ultimately responsible for the risky loans gone bad that are at the center of the current crisis, not the "free market."
The current mess is thus clearly shot through and through with government meddling with free markets, from the Fed-provided fuel to the CRA and land-use regulations to Fannie and Freddie creating an artificial market for risky mortgages in order to meet Congress's demands for more home-ownership opportunities for low-income families. Thanks to that intervention, many of those families have not only lost their homes, but also the savings they could have held onto for a few more years and perhaps used to acquire a less risky mortgage on a cheaper house. All of these interventions into the market created the incentive and the means for banks to profit by originating loans that never would have taken place in a genuinely free market.
It is worth noting that these regulations, policies, and interventions were often gladly supported by the private interests involved. Fannie and Freddie made billions while home prices rose, and their CEOs got paid lavishly. The same was true of the various banks and other mortgage market intermediaries who helped spread and price the risk that was in play, including those who developed all kinds of fancy new financial instruments all designed to deal with the heightened risk of default the intervention brought with it. This was a wonderful game they were playing and the financial markets were happy to have Fannie and Freddie as voracious buyers of their risky loans, knowing that US taxpayer dollars were always there if needed. The history of business regulation in the US is the history of firms using regulation for their own purposes, regardless of the public interest patina over the top of them. This is precisely what happened in the housing market. And it's also why calls for more regulation and more intervention are so misguided: they have failed before and will fail again because those with the profits on the line are the ones who have the resources and access to power to ensure that the game is rigged in their favor.
I know, my friends, that you are concerned about corporate power. So am I. So are many of my free-market economist colleagues. We simply believe, and we think history is on our side, that the best check against corporate power is the competitve marketplace and the power of the consumer dollar (framed, of course, by legal prohibitions on force and fraud). Competition plays mean, nasty corporations off against each other in a contest to serve us. Yes, they still have power, but its negative effects are lessened. It is when corporations can use the state to rig the rules in their favor that the negative effects of their power become magnified, precisely because it has the force of the state behind it. The current mess shows this as well as anything ever has, once you realize just what a large role the state played. If you really want to reduce the power of corporations, don't give them access to the state by expanding the state's regulatory powers. That's precisely what they want, as the current battle over the $700 billion booty amply demonstrates.
This is why so many of us committed to free markets oppose the bailout. It is yet another example of the long history of the private sector attempting to enrich itself via the state. When it does so, there are no benefits to the rest of us, unlike what happens when firms try to get rich in a competitive market. Moreover, these same firms benefited enormously from the regulatory interventions they supported and that harmed so many of us. The eventual bursting of the bubble and their subsequent losses are, to many of us, their just desserts for rigging the game and eventually getting caught. To reward them again for their rigging of the game is not just morally unconscionable, it is very bad econonmic policy, given that it sends a message to other would-be riggers that they too will get rewarded for wreaking havoc on the US economy. There will be short-term pain if we don't bailout these firms, but that is the hangover price we pay for 15 years or more of binge lending. The proposed bailout cannot prevent the pain of the hangover; it can only conceal it by shifting and dispersing it among the taxpayers and an economy weakened by the borrowing, taxing, and/or inflation needed to pay for that $700 billion. Better we should take our short-term pain straight up and clean out the mistakes of our binge and then get back to the business of free markets without creating an unchecked Executive branch monstrosity trying to "save" those who profited most from the binge and harming innocent taxpayers in the process.
What I ask of you my friends on the left is to not only continue to work with us to oppose this or any similar bailout, but to consider carefully whether you really want to entrust the same entity who is the predominant cause of this crisis with the power to attempt to cure it. New regulatory powers may look like the solution, but that's what people said when the CRA was passed, or when Fannie and Freddie were given new mandates. And the very firms who are going to be regulated will be first in line to determine how those regulations get written and enforced. You can bet which way that game is going to get rigged.
I know you are tempted to think that the problems with these regulations are the fault of the individuals doing the regulating. If only, you think, Obama can win and we can clean out the corrupt Republicans and put ethical, well-meaning folks in place. Think again. For one thing, almost every government intervention at the root of this crisis took place with a Democratic president or a Democratic-controlled Congress in place. Even when the Republicans controlled Congress, President Clinton worked around it to change the rules to allow Fannie and Freddie into the higher-risk loan market. My point here is not to pin the blame for the current crisis on the Democrats. That blame goes around equally. My point is that hoping that having the "right people" in power will avoid these problems is both naive and historically blind. As much as corporate interests were relevant, they were aided and abetted, if unintentionally, by well-meaning attempts by basically good people to do good things.The problem is that there were a large number of undesirable unintended consequences, most of which were predictable and predicted. It doesn't matter which party is captaining the ship: regulations come with unintended consequences and will always tend to be captured by the private interests with the most at stake. And history is full of cases where those with a moral or ideological agenda find themselves in political fellowship with those whose material interests are on the line, even if the two groups are usually on opposite sides. This is the famous "Baptists and Bootleggers" phenomenon.
If you've made it this far, I am most grateful. Whether or not you accept the whole argument I've laid out here, I do ask one thing of you: the story I told at the start of the role of government intervention in this mess is true, whatever your grander conclusions about the causes and cures are. Even if you don't buy my argument that more regulation isn't the cure, to blame this mess on "the free market" should now strike you as an obvious falsehood and I would hope, in the spirit of fair play, that you would stop making that claim as you speak and write about the ongoing events of the last two weeks. We can disagree in good faith about what to do next, and we can disagree in good faith about the degree to which government intervention caused the problems, but blaming a non-existent free market for a crisis that clearly was to some extent the result of government's extensive interventions in that market is unfair. So if I have persuaded you of nothing else, I hope deeply that I have persuaded you of that.
In the end, all I can ask of you is that you continue to think this through. Explaining this crisis by greed won't get you far as greed, like gravity, is a constant in our world. Explaining it as a failure of free markets faces the obvious truth that these markets were far from free of government. Consider that you may be mistaken. Consider that perhaps government intervention, not free markets, caused profit-seekers to undertake activities that harmed the economy. Consider that government intervention might have led banks and other organizations to take on risks that they never should have. Consider that government central banks are the only organizations capable of fueling this fire with excess credit. And consider that various regulations might have forced banks into bad loans and artificially pushed up home prices. Lastly, consider that private sector actors are quite happpy to support such intervention and regulation because it is profitable.
Those of us who support free markets are not your enemies right now. The real problem here is the marriage of corporate and state power. That is the corporatism we both oppose. I ask of you only that you consider whether such corporatism isn't the real cause of this mess and that therefore you reconsider whether free markets are the cause and whether increased regulation is the solution.
Thanks for reading.
Steve

Make yourself a BristleBot

2008-09-28T19:12:00.001+01:00

Make yourself a BristleBot - a simple, tiny robot made out of toothbrush...

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php?story=bristlebot

The Bursting Asset Bubbles

2008-09-27T09:03:00.001+01:00

A good analysis of the phenomenon of bubbles, by Sam Vankin.

http://samvak.tripod.com/pp166.html

The Warren Buffet Deal

2008-09-26T11:00:00.001+01:00

It would seem that Warren Buffet’s $5Bn investment into Goldman Sachs the other day is less good news than the media made it out to be.

Their message was along these lines: “Warren Buffet, the canny billionaire, is convinced that the current panic over banking stocks is unfounded, and has chosen to step into the market to the tune of $5Bn – a clear indication that these banking stocks are undervalued. So cheer up, and go fill your pockets with banking stocks.”

The truth, as always, is rather different.

Like all banks in these troubled times, Goldman needed to get its hands on some more cash. Warren Buffet agreed to hand over $5Bn, but with significant strings attached, notably a 10% dividend, a buy-out premium of 10% and a warrant to purchase $5Bn in common stock any time in the next five years.

So the truth is more along the lines of: “Goldman Sachs gets mugged of $5Bn by 78 year old bloke”. I would have thought that would be a much more interesting story…

Bubbles & Assets

2008-09-26T09:23:00.002+01:00

I’ve been contemplating the nature of assets that can become the centre of bubbles.

I’ve trawled the internet and blog sites to find some research on this particular field (rather than the topic of bubbles in general) and haven’t found much.

Is there a collective term for such assets that I should know, and should be searching for?

My ponderings have so far come up with the following:

Assets are of different types: Securities, Collectibles and Domestic Assets (I’m not sure about this last one – feels a bit too woolly)

Securities:
· Stocks
· Tulips?

Collectibles
· Stamps
· Beanie Babies
· Antiques
· Coins
· …

Domestic Assets Family Home

· Other necessary asset that has increasing value and is in short supply

All of these share some attributes:

· Limited Supply
· Potential for increasing value (some things simply don’t – a family car for example)
· Unknown Intrinsic value
· Unknown potential return (mining stocks, new technology stocks, …)
· Differentiated and identifiable so are easy to trade
· Marketable – or in some way sexy

So is there a general term for these assets? (If not, can they henceforth be known as Foulkes Assets?)

How likely is the Bush Bailout?

2008-09-25T09:03:00.002+01:00

Who knows? But you can see what numbers other people are putting on it by visiting the various betting websites that give odds for this sort of thing.

At the time of writing, Intrade was giving it around 79%

You can check out the current odds here: http://www.intrade.com/index.jsp?request_operation=trade&request_type=action&selConID=644000

Smiley Face on Google Maps

2008-09-25T08:56:00.003+01:00

Citizens of the russian town Chelyabinsk calculated when the satellite QuickBird would cross above their city. QuickBird takes images for Google Earth and Google Maps. They created a giant smiley face. A rock concert on the main square attracted many people and everyone got a yellow cape.And it worked. The image is on Google Maps. It looks like someone at Google was quicker than usual to put up the new data. Maybe Google likes the idea, that an entire town works hard to get its 15 minutes of fame on Google Maps.

Unfortunately this didn't last long. The image has now been pulled from Google Maps. You can check here: http://maps.google.com/maps/mm?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=55.160092,61.402094&spn=0.003438,0.009613&t=h&z=17

The Blue Screen of Death - Screen Saver

2008-09-24T21:11:00.002+01:00

A cute screen saver that pops up a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) - and cleverly picks the one approproiate to your OS.
Download it here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx

Why Paulson is Wrong

2008-09-22T15:45:00.001+01:00

Luigi Zingales
Robert C. Mc Cormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance
University of Chicago –GSB

When a profitable company is hit by a very large liability, as was the case in 1985 when Texaco lost a $12 billion court case against Pennzoil, the solution is not to have the government buy its assets at inflated prices: the solution is Chapter 11. In Chapter 11, companies with a solid underlying business generally swap debt for equity: the old equity holders are wiped out and the old debt claims are transformed into equity claims in the new entity which continues operating with a new capital structure. Alternatively, the debtholders can agree to cut down the face value of debt, in exchange for some warrants.

Even before Chapter 11, these procedures were the solutions adopted to deal with the large railroad bankruptcies at the turn of the twentieth century. So why is this wellestablished approach not used to solve the financial sectors current problems?

The obvious answer is that we do not have time; Chapter 11 procedures are generally long and complex, and the crisis has reached a point where time is of the essence. If left to the negotiations of the parties involved this process will take months and we do not have this luxury. However, we are in extraordinary times and the government has taken and is prepared to take unprecedented measures. As if rescuing AIG and prohibiting all short-selling of financial stocks was not enough, now Treasury Secretary Paulson proposes a sort of Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) that will buy out (with taxpayers’ money) the distressed assets of the financial sector. But, at what price?

If banks and financial institutions find it difficult to recapitalize (i.e., issue new equity) it is because the private sector is uncertain about the value of the assets they have in their portfolio and does not want to overpay. Would the government be better in valuing those assets? No. In a negotiation between a government official and banker with a bonus at risk, who will have more clout in determining the price? The Paulson RTC will buy toxic assets at inflated prices thereby creating a charitable institution that provides welfare to the rich—at the taxpayers’ expense. If this subsidy is large enough, it will succeed in stopping the crisis.

But, again, at what price? The answer: Billions of dollars in taxpayer money and, even worse, the violation of the fundamental capitalist principle that she who reaps the gains also bears the losses. Remember that in the Savings and Loan crisis, the government had to bail out those institutions because the deposits were federally insured.

But in this case the government does not have do bail out the debtholders of Bear Sterns, AIG, or any of the other financial institutions that will benefit from the Paulson RTC. Since we do not have time for a Chapter 11 and we do not want to bail out all the creditors, the lesser evil is to do what judges do in contentious and overextended bankruptcy processes: to cram down a restructuring plan on creditors, where part of the debt is forgiven in exchange for some equity or some warrants. And there is a precedent for such a bold move. During the Great Depression, many debt contracts were indexed to gold. So when the dollar convertibility into gold was suspended, the value of that debt soared, threatening the survival of many institutions. The Roosevelt Administration declared the clause invalid, de facto forcing debt forgiveness. Furthermore, the Supreme Court maintained this decision. My colleague and current Fed Governor Randall Koszner studied this episode and showed that not only stock prices, but bond prices as well, soared after the Supreme Court upheld the decision. How is that possible? As corporate finance experts have been saying for the last thirty years, there are real costs from having too much debt and too little equity in the capital structure, and a reduction in the face value of debt can benefit not only the equityholders, but also the debtholders.

If debt forgiveness benefits both equity and debtholders, why do debtholders not voluntarily agree to it? First of all, there is a coordination problem. Even if each individual debtholder benefits from a reduction in the face value of debt, she will benefit even more if everybody else cuts the face value of their debt and she does not. Hence, everybody waits for the other to move first, creating obvious delay. Secondly, from a debtholder point of view, a government bail-out is better. Thus, any talk of a government bail-out reduces the debtholders’ incentives to act, making the government bail-out more necessary.

As during the Great Depression and in many debt restructurings, it makes sense in the current contingency to mandate a partial debt forgiveness or a debt-for-equity swap in the financial sector. It has the benefit of being a well-tested strategy in the private sector and it leaves the taxpayers out of the picture. But if it is so simple, why no expert has mentioned it?

The major players in the financial sector do not like it. It is much more appealing for the financial industry to be bailed out at taxpayers’ expense than to bear their share of pain. Forcing a debt-for-equity swap or a debt forgiveness would be no greater a violation of private property rights than a massive bailout, but it faces much stronger political opposition. The appeal of the Paulson solution is that it taxes the many and benefits the few. Since the many (we, the taxpayers) are dispersed, we cannot put up a good fight in Capitol Hill; while the financial industry is well represented at all the levels. It is enough to say that for 6 of the last 13 years, the Secretary of Treasury was a Goldman Sachs alumnus. But, as financial experts, this silence is also our responsibility. Just as it is difficult to find a doctor willing to testify against another doctor in a malpractice suit, no matter how egregious the case, finance experts in both political parties are too friendly to the industry they study and work in.

The decisions that will be made this weekend matter not just to the prospects of the U.S. economy in the year to come; they will shape the type of capitalism we will live in for the next fifty years. Do we want to live in a system where profits are private, but losses are socialized? Where taxpayer money is used to prop up failed firms? Or do we want to live in a system where people are held responsible for their decisions, where imprudent behavior is penalized and prudent behavior rewarded? For somebody like me who believes strongly in the free market system, the most serious risk of the current situation is that the interest of few financiers will undermine the fundamental workings of the capitalist system. The time has come to save capitalism from the capitalists.

Another classic news report fron the Onion

2008-09-17T14:58:00.001+01:00

Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse

Abercrombie & Fitch

2008-09-11T11:05:00.002+01:00

For those of you who find Abercrombie & Fitch more than a little ridiculous...

Save the Earth in Six Hard Questions

2008-09-09T14:43:00.002+01:00

One of my favourite Economists is Steve Landsburg - author of "The Armchair Economist" (see my previous blog)

He wrote an article in Slate Magazine last year that gives a framework for formulating an opinion on Global Warming - pretty useful in a debate where emotion and prejudice are rife.

It's well worth a read. You can find it here: http://www.slate.com/id/2176156/pagenum/all/#page_start

An Open Invitation to Join the Pigou Club

2008-09-09T10:27:00.004+01:00

Gregory Mankiw - a Harvard economist and former advisor to George W Bush - gave a talk earlier this year justifying a significant rise in petrol (gas) taxes in the USA. Makes very interesting reading.
And you'll be able to bore your friends with your understanding of Pigovian taxation...
you can find the transcript here: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/files/Smart%20Taxes.pdf

Cancer, cancer everywhere

2008-09-04T09:27:00.001+01:00

I guess it’s an age thing. Cancer seems to be in the air. Only a few weeks ago my cousin Nerilda died of cancer in a clinic in Rome. The next day my friend Inike died in a hospice in Seattle after an 18 month fight with pancreatic cancer. At the same time we learned that Dirk had been diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to his spine. Yesterday Dominique found metastatic lesions on her liver, three years after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

There’s no point to this blog, and no conclusion.

Other than “sometimes life just sucks”.

Another Quote From "Boston Legal"

2008-09-03T09:20:00.001+01:00

Denny Crane: Alan, you know, one thing you sometimes forget is: no matter how hard your day, no matter how tough your choices, how complex your ethical decisions–you always get to choose what you want for lunch.

Alan Shore: Daily, I am amazed at your inexhaustible ability to just live.

Denny Crane: It’s either that or die.

Series 2 – Episode 22

The best ever fish & chips

2008-08-27T20:12:00.002+01:00

The Seafood Experience

I had the best ever fish & chips today - from the Seafood Experience in Shoreham.
The fish was fresh batter hake - delicious.
The chips were chunky and perfectly cooked.
If you live within striking distance (i.e. within 50 miles!) go there!!!

29-31 Ferry Rd
Shoreham-by-Sea,
BN43 5RA,
United Kingdom
+44 1273 464768

Origami Starball

2008-08-16T03:17:00.001+01:00

today's test

Ouch

2008-07-02T07:50:00.002+01:00

Sourdough

2008-06-26T16:43:00.003+01:00

Yippee! Today my latest sourdough starter came to life.

Once a year, more or less, I go through a sourdough phase. Not only is sourdough bread delicious, but creating and nurturing a starter is rather like having a pet, but without the vet bills or the litter trays.

There are loads of sites on the interweb giving complex recipies, techniques and incantations for the generaition of sourdough starters. They seem to be there to put people off. It's ever so easy really. Here's how to do it.

Take a pot, jar or bowl that will hold about 1l.
Put about 100g of flour in it (it doesn't matter what type) and enough water to make a stiff batter.
Stir well.
Do nothing for 24 hours.
Stir in another 100g of flour and more water to return it to the stiff batter consistency.
Stir well.
Do nothing for 24 hours.
Use half of you mixture in your next batch of bread (using your normal recipe), or just throw it away.
Stir in another 100g of flour and more water to return it to the stiff batter consistency.
Stir well.
etc.
After four or five days the mixture will start to magically rise, as the natural yeasts and lactic acids in the flour take hold. Your starter is alive!

Once you have your live starter, you're ready to make some bread.
I cheat. I make the dough in my bread machine, using half the starter instead of yeast. But I bake it in the oven - it's much nicer that way.

You need to keep the starter alive by feeding it and watering it, but that's fine if you make bread every couple of days or so.

Experiment with different bread recipes. Because you can't control which types of yeast develop your starter will be different to any other starter, so try out diferent types of bread to fund out which works best.

And when you're bored of having a bowl of gunge lying around the kitchen, simply forget to keep half the starter back when you make bread. That way you dispose of your annoying pet (in time for the family holiday) but without the guilt associated with leaving it by the side of the motorway...

Happy baking!

Elena's latest blog

2008-06-24T21:03:00.003+01:00

My sister elena has a brilliant blog at http://1000sensations.com
Her latest blog is about me!

For the non-Brit viewers of these cartoons, these are not real tests that British children are subjected to - not formally, at least. I think children all over the world are informally subjected to evaluations of this kind all the time. This is how I think someone like my brother might have scored on one of these tests… (don’t sue me Chris!)

Defining moments 42 - Belonging again
For the non-Brit viewers of these cartoons, these are not real tests that British children are subjected to - not formally, at least. I think children all over the world are informally subjected to evaluations of this kind all the time. This is how I think someone like my brother might have scored on one of these tests… (don’t sue me Chris!)

Four Failures of Deliberating Groups

2008-06-16T13:22:00.003+01:00

Ever noticed how group discussions and deliberations can result in an obviously wrong conclusion? Even when the group is made up of intelligent and informed people?

Yet there is an overwhelming assumption that vigorous debate leading to a decisision - consenual or not - is a good way of solving problems. I've always been suspicious of this. Now Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie have posted their new paper, “Four Failures of Deliberating Groups” on SSRN that explains why. Here’s the abstract:

Many groups make their decisions through some process of deliberation, usually with the belief that deliberation will improve judgments and predictions. But deliberating groups often fail, in the sense that they make judgments that are false or that fail to take advantage of the information that their members have.

There are four such failures.

(1) Sometimes the predeliberation errors of group members are amplified, not merely propagated, as a result of deliberation.

(2) Groups may fall victim to cascade effects, as the judgments of initial speakers or actors are followed by their successors, who do not disclose what they know. Nondisclosure, on the part of those successors, may be a product of either informational or reputational cascades.

(3) As a result of group polarization, groups often end up in a more extreme position in line with their predeliberation tendencies. Sometimes group polarization leads in desirable directions, but there is no assurance to this effect.

(4) In deliberating groups, shared information often dominates or crowds out unshared information, ensuring that groups do not learn what their members know. All four errors can be explained by reference to informational signals, reputational pressure, or both. A disturbing result is that many deliberating groups do not improve on, and sometimes do worse than, the predeliberation judgments of their average or median member.

Amazing Magic Trick

2008-06-16T09:32:00.001+01:00

10 optical illusions in 2 minutes

2008-06-16T09:25:00.001+01:00

I love the dinosaur!

Tina's tesselated doodle

2008-06-12T21:16:00.001+01:00

Men's Insecurities

2008-06-01T18:37:00.001+01:00

I produced this a few years ago, pissed off at a magazine a friend was reading...

Suilven - Sutherland

2008-06-01T13:48:00.002+01:00

A great line from "Boston Legal"

2008-05-28T12:05:00.001+01:00

Don’t waste your time trying to get in my head. There’s nothing there.

Spaghetti Carbonara

2008-05-27T17:13:00.005+01:00

This is a fantastically easy receipe – but also pretty simple to bugger up badly if you’re not careful. Here’s how to get it right:

Per person:

100g spaghetti
50g pancetta or streaky bacon
1 egg
30g freshly grated parmesan

Boil the spaghetti in plenty of salty water.

Cut the pancetta or bacon into small cubes and fry in a heavy pan with a dash of olive oil. Don’t be tempted to make the pancetta too crispy – it won’t mix well with the cooked spaghetti.

When the spaghetti are al dente, drain – but not too thoroughly. This is the biggest mistake you can make with this recipe. The spaghetti will continue to absorb water after they are drained; if the spaghetti are too dry the dish will be a stick mess and a disaster.

Add the bacon (and fat – that’s where the flavour is) to the spaghetti and toss gently.

Wait 1 minute for the spaghetti to cool down then break the eggs into them; add the grated parmesan and toss.

Serve immediately.

If you want, feel free to add some onions (shallots are nicer), garlic, chilli, black pepper, or anything that takes your fancy to the cooking bacon to add some extra flavour.

Paola's Nightmare

2008-05-18T12:40:00.005+01:00

Paola is playing Mowgli in her school production of The Jungle Book...

Having secured the starring role, she's a little nervous about what her costume will be.

So she drew a little cartoon:

What are the Ten Commandments for?

2008-05-16T14:41:00.000+01:00

I’ve asked this question to different groups of people, and often get the same reaction – what a daft question… Maybe, but It doesn’t seem daft to me. A being for B isn’t a straightforward concept at the best of times. Add a layer of religion into the discussion and you’ve got a potential minefield. Minefields can be fun!

The traditional religious view is that the Ten Commandments were delivered by God (via Moses) to the Hebrews, in order to keep them on the straight and narrow during their journey from Egypt to Canaan. In which case my question becomes “What specifically did God have in mind in terms of keeping the Hebrews on the straight and narrow?” Possible answers to this are “Continue to believe in Me”, “Maintain an orderly society”, “Remain a differentiated community”…

Another reasonable answer is that the Ten Commandments aren’t for anything, because they weren’t written in one go, but assembled over a period of time. So there was no specific moment when someone said “Hey, I have to solve problem X. Wouldn’t Ten Commandments be a cool solution?”. [I won’t go over the history of the Ten Commandments – that’s pretty well covered elsewhere.]

An interesting alternative would be an answer loosely based on the anthropic principle: the Ten Commandments have existed for 2500 years so their principle purpose was/is to exist. It doesn’t matter what the external effects of the Ten Commandments are, as long as they remain talked about they have achieved their purpose.

What else could the Ten Commandments be for?

The Twelve Commandments

2008-05-15T15:14:00.002+01:00

Following my earlier blog, here are the ten commandments:

I am the Lord your God
You shall have no other gods before me
You shall not make for yourself an idol
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
Honour your father and mother
You shall not murder
You shall not commit adultery
You shall not steal
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour
You shall not covet your neighbour's house
You shall not covet your neighbour's wife

You’ll notice that there are actually twelve of them.

The Jewish tradition combines 2 and 3, and 11 and 12.

The Roman Catholic tradition combines 1, 2 and 3.

Other traditions mess around with them in other combinations…

How many did you get?

The Ten Commandments

2008-05-15T13:21:00.002+01:00

Do you know the ten commandments?

I was wondering about these recently – and I’ll get round to why later. What surprised me was that I couldn’t list the ten. And when I asked people around me, they couldn’t either.

These people were not uneducated, irreligious people. Quite the opposite.

So go on, have a go. Get a pencil and paper and see how far you get.

Zabaglione - Zabaione - Zabajone

2008-05-14T20:19:00.002+01:00

One of my favourite deserts, and a great last-minute standby…

The traditional recipe uses just egg yolks, sugar and marsala (a sweet, Sicilian wine) and is often served with fruit (figs or berries).

But, don’t let that hold you back. Any number of variations can impress:

Whisk the egg whites and fold into the zabaglione – light and frothy…
Use champagne instead of Marsala – frothier still…
Use sherry instead of Marsala – or whatever’s in the back of the drinks cupboard...
Serve with dry biscuits – especially cantucci – and another glass of whatever you used in the zabaglione – and more biscuits…
Mix with chocolate mousse – sounds disgusting but isn’t…

Zabaglione is usually served warm, though it can be served cold, or as a sauce, or even frozen.

Note for pedants: zabaglione is classified as a "caudle" rather than a custard. A "caudle" is a sauce used as a custard to fill pies or tarts.

Another note for pedants: the original pre-sixteenth century version was a drink made or wine or ale thickened with egg yolks.

Anyway – here goes with the recipe:

Per person:

1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon Marsala

Use a bowl that you can place over a pan of boiling water…

Whisk the yolks and sugar until thick and pale yellow. Add the Marsala and whisk for another minute.

Heat over boiling water, stirring constantly until the zabaglione thickens.

Serve immediately.

Fond Memories - 0001

2008-04-05T02:17:00.000+01:00

Following Elena's lead, Mait and Chris tried their hands at cartooning fond family memories, starting with an amusing poo-related incident...
Two different styles - which do you prefer?

Mait's version:

And this is Chris's version:

Gars - Brighton

2008-02-23T08:53:00.001Z

I used to like Gars – a Chinese restaurant with attitude in the Brighton Lanes.

For some reason, we hadn’t been for a few years. In the spirit of renewal and revival we had dinner there last week.

In the spirit of friendship and sharing, I urge you not to go there.

It was obvious from the moment we entered that something was different. The décor was the same – maybe a few more tables than before – but nothing obvious.

What had clearly changed was the people. Gars is now chav central. Not that I have anything against chavs – you all know that I am tolerance incarnate. I just don’t like to have dinner with them.

On the plus side, I felt slim and attractive. On the negative side – just about everything else.

The food (that used to be challenging and adventurous) is now bland and dull. The small portions that used to be symbols of sophistication are now merely a mercy.

At the table next to ours, a wonderful duo in synthetic attire were sweating profusely from the piquancy of a dish – that possibly had a little white pepper dusted over it. Mr Chav summoned the waiter and complained that he had asked if their order was likely to be spicy. “You should know – our people aren’t used to this sort of thing.” I’ve never heard chavs describe themselves as ‘a people’ (are they to be the future oppressed nation?)

So please take my advice. Don’t go.

Tagliatelle con il sugo di coniglio

2008-02-22T12:05:00.001Z

I found this recipe on ribollita.com – a lovely website which I recommend to you all…

Here’s the recipe, followed by the author’s memories of his Nonna Ada

Grandma Ada's Rabbit Sauce

1 rabbit
50 grams (approx. 1.8 ounces) of tomato paste
1 thin slice of lard
rosemary
2 garlic cloves
1/2 onion parsley
1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Carefully clean the rabbit. Cut it into small pieces. Put the liver aside. Drain it well and pat it dry with paper towels. Put the pieces of rabbit in a wide pan with two garlic cloves and a bundle of rosemary tied with a string to keep the leaves together. Heat it over a very low flame to evaporate all of the water. Drain the bottom of the pot. When the meat is dry, add a mixture of the lard, the onion, the liver, a little parsley and some more rosemary. Also add the olive oil. Let it cook until the rabbit gets a nice golden brown color, then add a cup of white wine. When the wine has evaporated, add salt, pepper and the paste dissolved in a cup of water. Let it cook slowly for at least an hour. A great sauce will form on the bottom of the pan to top your homemade tagliatelle. You can serve the rabbit as a main course. It's also excellent together with the pasta. Grandma Ada made it in the fireplace over coals.

Tagliatelle con il sugo di coniglio

When I was a child, my mother often brought me to Grandma Ada's. My maternal grandparents lived in the open countryside, in Cascina in the county of Castiglione Del Lago, where they worked their piece of land. In the early '60's, there still wasn't electric light here. My grandmother would often cook rabbit for the sauce to put on the tagliatelle that she made herself on an old spianatoia, a special pasta-making table. The main ingredients were, of course, all extremely fresh, taken straight from the farmyard. Grandma Ada scooped the rabbit straight from its cage, killed it, cleaned it and cooked it all the same morning. She cooked it in the fireplace, lighting a few coals under the trivet on which she placed the pot with the pieces of rabbit, garlic and rosemary. She let the liquid cook out and occasionally drained it. When the meat began to dry nicely, she added some oil, a bit of lard with onion, a pinch of parsley and some more rosemary. All morning, it would simmer slowly on the coals, which were occasionally refreshed under the pot. I can still remember the aroma that floated in the air. When the pieces of rabbit began to brown, Grandma added a glass of good wine. When they had become beautifully golden, she added some tomato concentrate. Of course, this was before the time of canned peeled tomatoes and sauces. She let it cook slowly and the aroma intensified as a wonderfully flavorful, delicate sauce formed on the bottom of the pot, ready to top the tagliatelle. The pieces of rabbit were served as the main course. Pulled out of the sauce, they were so crisp and browned that it was like they had been roasted. I liked to eat the rabbit meat together with the tagliatelle. To this day, when we make tagliatelle with rabbit sauce at home, I still eat it with the tagliatelle.