January 2009 Archives
My experiment in free discourse seems to have been well-received but poorly-executed. The internet is still rife with comment spam, and my adaptive spam filter appears to do a fairly bad job at discerning legitimate comments from spam ones: out of 32 comments, it tagged the 4 legitimate ones as spam and let 4 spams through. Spammers have moreover caught on the idea of creating accounts on Blogger, so that they can use their IDs to authenticate themselves on my site, bypassing my spam controls. At any rate, there is a very simple solution to the spam problem, which is used on sites like Blogger and Blogspot. CAPTCHAs, images of distorted text that test whether a user is a human, are extremely easy for humans to read, but extremely difficult for spammers to bypass. It's not a perfect system: some spammers have succeeded in overcoming the system with low probability, and it limits accessibility of the visually impaired. But I think it is the best of an imperfect set of options, and hopefully it will be easy to implement on MovableType.
Curious whether the internet is still ridden with comment spam, I have (temporarily?) lifted all restrictions on commenting on this blog. No comment accounts are now required. Full anonymity is possible. Think of it as discursive glasnost.
Certain cities have certain exceptional features to which one becomes accustomed after living in one place for long enough. When one moves to a new city--even a superior city--the new can initially be unfairly discounted by the lack of one's old haunts. So it was with me, when I moved from Portland to Chicago. Portland excels in at least two areas that mattered a lot to me: coffee shops and Thai restaurants. While coffee shops in Chicago are now a solved problem, good Thai food has consistently eluded my grasp, causing me to burn through an embarrassing amount of cash in exchange for gooey pad thai and bland curries. Silver Spoon Thai in Chicago may be the answer, however. It is not the best Thai food, but it is good and vastly superior to all other known local competition.
Before even tasting a drop of Tom Yum soup, Silver Spoon stood out a priori: it is located next door to the Thai Consulate General of Chicago. The reasoning of our group was that no restauranteur in his right mind would be daring enough to open a bad Thai restaurant next to the Thai consulate. Other features that sent a good initial signal were its location in a basement and its cheapness, two hallmarks of great Thai street food in this country.
And we were right. The Tom Yum soup was enjoyable. We had something called a banana blossom salad (the subject of an ABC special earlier that week), which was exceptional. It was unclear where the banana blossoms were, but the combination of a little grilled chicken, vegetables, and a light peanut sauce worked beautifully. The Pad Thai--the litmus test of Thai street food--measured up to my astronomical expectations. Its balance of flavor was skewed in favor of Tamarind, which I enjoyed, but it was probably not spicy enough (this place has probably been discovered by too many dull-palated Chicagoans). A red curry was well-flavored, though I was disappointed by the lack of enough vegetables. Bamboo shoots were the primary vegetable--except, they are not even really a vegetable, so I felt a little unfulfilled. Other good dishes we tried included Spicy Basil Beef (again, not spicy enough), and one other thing that I have since forgotten.
The point is, there is good Thai to be had in this city, and one should not lower one's standards simply to maintain a healthy level of Thai intake. Just go to Silver Spoon all of the time. You will not be disappointed.
Grade: B+
Good: Banana blossom salad; noodle dishes have well-balanced flavors; cheap
Bad: Anemic curries; nothing is spicy enough
Location: 710 N Rush St, Chicago, IL
The bus ad for atheism in the UK has now spread to Spain. The buses bear a simple banner reading, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life." Unsurprisingly the reaction from the Catholic church has been uniformly negative. A similar ad on buses in Washington DC asked commuters, "Why believe in God? Just be good for goodness sake." It similarly provoked a backlash from religious interests in the US. But the British version of Spanish ad was welcomed by some religious organizations in the famously secular UK. They believed that the discussion raised by the campaign would stimulate interest in religion as well as atheism and humanism.
Given the inexplicable scorn which atheism and humanism generally receive from religious circles and the general public in this country, the increased visibility that the ads give to these ideas is very welcome. The notion that a morality requires a religious basis is a non sequitur at best. At worst, it destroys people's ability to grapple with moral issues in a logical framework, substituting religious justification. By the very fact that this is based on belief rather than reason, religious morality can theoretically justify anything. Hopefully these generally tasteful and innocuous posters will prod people to think a little, even if they still like their gods.
From an exchange between Winston Churchill and an angry female member of parliament:
MP: Mr Churchill, you are drunk.
Churchill: Madame, you are ugly.
MP: Mr. Churchill, you are extremely drunk!
Churchill: Madame, you are extremely ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober.
The New York Times coverage of the recent economic crisis repeatedly alludes to research done by Christina Romer, Barack Obama's appointee to the chair of Council of Economic Advisors, in which she argues that monetary policy has been far more effective than fiscal policy in combating recessions. Indeed, since WWII the monetarist prescription of the Federal Reserve has been the primary mechanism for stabilizing macroeconomic performance. While many prefer monetary policy for economic reasons, it is also preferable for reasons of transparency. But interest rates can obviously only go as low zero, so monetary policy can be inadequate in economic situations as severe as the present. Keynesian fiscal stimulus is the next logical weapon in the economic arsenal, but even the government's ability to spend is finite, and the present US situation may be approaching this limit.
While there is an entire economic literature devoted to the effects of monetary and fiscal policy, there are practical reasons to prefer monetary manipulations over fiscal ones. In particular, monetary policy is determined by a relatively small group of experts who can determine the optimal policy with the least political pressure practically possible. On the other hand, using fiscal stimulus requires pushing a bill through Congress, potentially producing suboptimal contamination by special interest groups with noneconomic motivations. Given the convoluted and incoherent legislation that results from Congress in response to complicated, high-profile exogenous shocks, this is particularly problematic. Already, we see that Obama's stimulus plan was prepackaged to contain large amounts of tax-cuts to win over Republicans, even though tax cuts are far less likely to generate immediate economic activity than alternatives like infrastructure construction.
Monetary policy does have some limits. Interest rates can only go to zero. In liquidity traps, the government can obviously just increase liquidity by simply printing more money. This is a perfectly viable option as long as inflation is low. Indeed, this has the effect of raising inflationary expectations, thereby lowering the expected real interest rates charged by banks.
So far, the US has not attempted this kind of "helicopter money", but the monetary policies thus attempted appear to be insufficient to stabilize the economy. Barack Obama's $800 billion stimulus package would add fiscal stimulus to the mix. This is all well and good, except that the US is already running an estimated $1.2 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year. It is not altogether clear what the upper limit of US spending power is. It is clear that there is a theoretical limit, however, and there is some evidence that we could be approaching it.
Financing government deficits requires that someone buys government bonds. The reason why small countries cannot afford to be as fiscally irresponsible as the US is because they have lower credit ratings, investors are more hesitant to lend to them, and borrowing is consequently much more costly. But the US could end up in an analogous situation. China is currently the largest holder of US treasuries, and that country has dramatically reduced its purchases of new US bonds. This suggests that US bonds are looking less appealing to foreign investors. This could partially be due to the low yields present today. But these low yields are due to strong domestic demand for treasuries. The moment economic recovery begins, demand for treasuries will further dry up, causing borrowing to become far more expensive for the government. Worse yet, such a decrease in the price of treasuries would mean that the many investors who bought treasuries when yields were at record lows would face a loss if they sold their bonds, inducing many to simply hold their bonds to maturity to get a profit. This would have the consequence of keeping private investment mired in government bonds, and necessitating (or perhaps just prompting) more fiscal stimulus. This additional stimulus would necessarily be funded borrowing at ever higher rates of interest.
