Books: Jules Verne`s: From The Earth To The Moon

 (Drivebycuriosity) - In the year 1969 the first human landed on the moon, in the year 1865 Jules Verne dreamed an early version of the journey to the earth`s satelitte: "From the Earth to the Moon". 

Verne´s moon shot happens in an alternate world, short after an undefined war, that destroyed the business of the canon producers. The President of the American gun club, that represents the American canon industry, has an idea how to compensate the missing business. Why not construct a giant canon and use it to shoot people on the moon?

Verne might have been inspired by 19th century circus shows where acrobats in the manege seemingly got shot through canons, even though the circuses used heavy rubber springs, not gunpowder, for propulsion.

The plot follows the long process from the decision to the final moon shot. The author described elaborately the engineering and the economics of the canon production and the social implications of the moonshot.  

Verne was not ignorant of the fact that humans cannot survive the immense heat & sudden push of a canon shot, so he imaged an elaborate cushioning system. "Undoubtedly the travelers would still have to encounter a violent recoil after the complete escapement of the water; but the first shock would be almost entirely destroyed by this powerful spring".

In contemporary science fiction space travelers sometimes have to survive deadly gravity caused by enormous acceleration. Scifi authors therefore imagine special beds that cushion the otherwise deadly intensified gravity.

"From The Earth To The Moon" is a funny tale, a farce, mixing fantasy with facts. Verne invented a new kind of novel, a "Roman de la Science" ("novel of science"), which allowed him to incorporate large amounts of the factual information he discovered while researching in the Bibliothèque ( wikipedia). He wrote of course for a 19th century audience, who had much less knowledge than people today. But Verne`s stories remind me a bit of a modern scifi subgenre, called cyber punk.

Even though the novel is a farce Verne acknowledges the physics of space flights: "As we recede from the earth the action of gravitation diminishes in the inverse ratio of the square of the distance; that is to say, at three times a given distance the action is nine times less". 

Anyway, "From The Earth To The Moon" is also an optimistic statement with a can-do attitude and belief into technology. Verne also praises of the efficiency of American engineering. "Nothing can astound an American. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise".

The novel has a surprising ending - but based on modern physics and cosmology. It is still fun to read. 

The novel is part of a giant omnibus reader: "Jules Verne: Complete Works (Wisehouse Classics)", that contains 47 novels! more than 10,000 pages! ( amazon). 

Books: Whatever By Michel Houellebecq

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Michel Houellebecq belongs to the most important contemporary philosophers and novel writers in France, maybe of the world. Houellebecq`s texts are precise and analytical; he performs literary autopsies - and he likes to provoke. After enjoying the master`s recent books, I took a look on the beginning of his career and read "Whatever", his first novel (first published 1994 amazon).

Houellebecq`s debut gives already a taste of his qualities. Like later works the plot is told in first person, by a man who is pathetic & obnoxious, but also smart and has the gift of an analytical mind. 

The novel is philosophical with a very pessimist undertone - as usual for Houellebecq. I am not too much impressed by the plot. But what makes me reading him again and again - and makes me a fan of him - are the author`s sharp wit and his analytical & precise musings about almost anything  

For instance: 

"Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It’s what’s known as ‘the law of the market’. In an economic system where unfair dismissal is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their place. In a sexual system where adultery is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their bed mate. In a totally liberal economic system certain people accumulate considerable fortunes; others stagnate in unemployment and misery. In a totally liberal sexual system certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude2.

And: "The successive sexual experiences accumulated during adolescence undermine and rapidly destroy all possibility of projection of an emotional and romantic sort; progressively, and in fact extremely quickly, one becomes as capable of love as an old slag."

I wish, Houellebecq publishes more books.

  

 

Books: The Burning Stones By Antti Tuomainen

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Antti Tuomainen belonged to my favorite writers. I like his dark humor & his surreal descriptions of weird characters and situations and I enjoyed his droll novels like "Little Siberia", "Palm Beach Finland" & "The Man who died" (my reviews Siberia  Palm   The Man Who).

Unfortunately his book, "The Burning Stones", disappoints (amazon ). The novel is set in Finland´s sauna business, the burning stones. As usual the plot is told in first person, this time by a woman, 50 something, who is sales manager for sauna stoves. Typical für a Tuomainen novel the characters behave weird and tend to irrationality. 

In this book the weirdness gets more and more worse over the time and more and more implausible. At around 80% of the Kindle version the plot falls completely apart and the novel ends like a fairy tale.

Tuomainen can do better.  

Science Fiction: Bowl Of Heaven By Gregory Benford & Larry Niven

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Gregory Benford and Larry Niven belong to the Grandmasters of Science Fiction. Together they created the novel "Bowl of Heaven", a fascinating space opera, Vol. 1 of a trilogy  ( amazon). Some humans want to settle in another part of the universe and started a centuries long journey, which leads to  unexpected results (this is a spoiler free blog).

The authors welted a lot sciences into a thrilling adventure story. The novel shows that Benford is an astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the department of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. But he also has the talent to create exciting stories. 

It is not surprising that the tandem imagined a breathtaking technology based on particle physics, cosmology & chemistry. For instance the authors describe a spaceship that is an intricate self-regulating system and self-tech entity, with artificial intelligences embedded in every subsystem. The spaceship is an anthology of self-critical and disciplined minds. Each mind lived its life with a reward system and constraints, dwelling in a community of diverse talents, propelled it into a social intelligence. Comparable to human societies the ship  evolved over the centuries of its flight into its own, original society.  

The authors also invented an alien world that is partly familiar and partly very strange. The inhabitants - intelligent beings, animals & plants - seem to be highly exotic, but they are plausible because based on what we know about evolution on earth. The complex  psychology & sociology of these beings (the aliens) is plausible and fascinating and I also find behavior and the relationships of the human characters interesting. There is also some sex involved, very unusual for the timid science fiction genre.

I got highly entertained, could refresh old knowledge and learned a lot new insights. I also got inspired to think about our place in the universe.

I plan to read Vol. 2 in a not too far future.

Books: The Rules Of Attraction

(Drivebycuriosity) - Bret Easton Ellis belongs to the stars of contemporary American fiction, albeit controversial. His novel "The Shards" (published 2023 ) creates a hitchcockian atmosphere and
pulled me into a sinister vertigo (my review )

His earlier novel "The Rules of attraction" (published 2010  amazon ) doesn`t have these qualities, even the author uses very similar condiments. The plot develops in short episodes, all told in first person, by female & male characters, college students in North East US. They are all obnoxious, pathetic & egocentric. Like in "The Shards" the protagonist`s  universes circle about parties, drugs, beer and fucking - lots of fucking. Unfortunately none of them and their sheer endless experiences were interesting.

It looks like Bret Easton Ellis`craftmanship developed a lot since publishing this novel and in "The Shards" he finally welted his ideas together. 

Economy: The European Commission - The New Robber Barons

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Europe follows the tradition. In medieval times the Rhine Valley, a section of the River Rhine, that flows from the Swiss mountains to the North Sea, was flanked by castles. There lived robber barons who made their living from robbing and blackmailing traders who traveled through their territory. Today the European Union, controlled by the European Commission, does the same. The EU demands ransom from US technology corporations who do business in Europe.

“This year, like last year, the European Union will again make more money from fining US tech companies than from the total tax income from Europe’s own public tech companies!", reports Alex Tabarrok ( marginalrevolution). 

Recently the European Commission fined Google €890 (x.com ) million for breaching their Digital Markets Act. In 2024 the European Commission fined Apple over €1.8 billion "over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers" (ec.europa.eu ). Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been fined several times by EU regulators, including for violations of user privacy and competition laws. It is also facing new fines over purportedly "addictive" features of its apps. In 2021 the EU hit Amazon with a $886 million fine for an alleged data law breach ( bbc.com). The fine was issued by Luxembourg's National Commission for Data Protection, which claimed the tech giant's processing of personal data did not comply with EU law.

The enormous fines are not surprising. Google and other Big Tech corporation earn a lot money - that animates greed and the EU has the power to extort the profits by taking their European business ransom and blackmailing them. If US Tech wants to continue business in the EU they have to pay whatever the EU demands. 

The EU created a complex scrub of arbitrary rules to catch US Tech and accuse them of wrong doing. 

 

 

Books: The Holocaust Industry By Norman G. Finkelstein

 (Drivebycuriosity) - The 20th century had a lot apocalyptic human tragedies: The Jewish Holocaust, the murderous regimes of Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot, the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I and the Japanese terror in China & Korea. And what about Hiroshima and Vietnam? Most of the are these genocides are almost forgotten, but the Holocaust still rules the headlines.

That is primarily thanks to "The Holocaust Industry", claims the Jewish author Norman G. Finkelstein in his little book "The Holocaust Industry" (amazon  ). The author, who is Jewish himself and had lost family members in concentration camps, is annoyed that a large group of people and organizations are taking advantage from the suffering of the Jewish people. 

Annual Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust are a national event in the US. All 50 states sponsor commemorations, often in state legislative chambers. The Association of Holocaust Organizations lists over 100 Holocaust institutions in the United States. Seven major Holocaust museums dot the American landscape. The centerpiece of this memorialization is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Where is the national museum refering to the genocide on the Native Americans or to some 4–5 million men, women and children died as a result of the US wars in Indochina?

 Apart from Holocaust memorials, fully seventeen states mandate or recommend Holocaust programs in their schools, and many colleges and universities have endowed chairs in Holocaust studies. Hardly a week passes without a major Holocaust-related story in the New York Times. The number of scholarly studies devoted to the Nazi Final Solution is conservatively estimated at over 10,000. 

Finkelstein reports that the Holocaust Industry includes a "credulous press ready to give banner headlines to any Holocaust-related story". According to Finkelstein "the New York Times serves as the main promotional vehicle of the Holocaust industry. It is primarily responsible for having advanced the careers of Jerzy Kosinski, Daniel Goldhagen, and Elie Wiesel. For frequency of coverage, the Holocaust places a close second to the daily weather report". Finkelstein claims that "the US is the corporate headquarters of the Holocaust industry". 

The Holocaust industry sprung up only after Israel’s overwhelming display of military dominance and flourished amid extreme Israeli triumphalism.

 

                Outright Extortion Racket 

In recent years, the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Using the House and Senate banking committees as a springboard, the Holocaust industry orchestrated a shameless campaign of vilification.
 

 The Holocaust Industry accused Swiss bank to take advantage and … “a fifty-year Swiss-Nazi conspiracy to steal billions from Europe’s Jews and Holocaust survivors.”The campaign rapidly degenerated into a libel of the Swiss people.“a country whose citizens . . . boasted to their neighbors about their enviable wealth, was quite knowingly profiting from blood money”; that “the apparently respectable citizens of the world’s most peaceful nation . . . committed an unprecedented theft”; that “dishonesty was a cultural code that individual Swiss had mastered to protect the nation’s image and prosperity”; that the Swiss were “instinctively attracted to healthy profits” (only the Swiss?); that “self-interest was the supreme guide for all of Switzerland’s banks” (only Switzerland’s banks?); that “Switzerland’s small breed of bankers had become greedier and more immoral than most”; that “concealment and deception were practiced arts among Swiss diplomats” (only Swiss diplomats?); that “apologies and resignations were not common in Switzerland’s political tradition” (unlike our own?); that “Swiss greed was unique”; that the “Swiss character” combined “simplicity and duplicity,” and “behind the appearance of civility was a layer of obstinacy, and beyond that was solid egotistical incomprehension of anyone else’s opinion”; that the Swiss were “not just a peculiarly charmless people who had produced no artists, no heroes since William Tell and no statesmen, but were dishonest Nazi collaborators who had profited from genocide,” and on and on.

Apart from blocking access to Holocaust accounts and purchasing looted gold, the Swiss also stood accused of conspiring with Poland and Hungary to defraud Jews.  

Beyond whipping up public hysteria, the Holocaust industry coordinated a two-pronged strategy to “terrorize” (Bower) the Swiss into submission: class-action lawsuits and an economic boycott.

 In February 1996 Hevesi and McCall wrote the Swiss banks threatening sanctions. In October Governor Pataki publicly lent his support. During the next several months local and state governments in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Illinois all tabled resolutions threatening an economic boycott unless the Swiss banks came clean. In May 1997 the city of Los Angeles, withdrawing hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds from a Swiss bank, imposed the first sanctions.

 In July 1998 Hevesi and McCall threatened stiff new sanctions. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, and California joined in within days. In mid-August the Swiss finally caved in.

Total attorney fee demands run to $15 million, with “many” billing at a rate of $600 per hour. One lawyer is asking $2,400 for reading Tom Bower’s book, Nazi Gold. “Jewish groups and survivors,” New York’s Jewish Week reported, “are taking off the gloves as they vie for a share of the Swiss banks’ $1.25 billion Holocaust-era settlement.”

After the Holocaust industry settled with Switzerland in August 1998, it deployed the same winning strategy against Germany in September.

Forgoing diplomatic niceties, Congressman Rick Lazio bluntly urged the Committee “to focus on the private sector German companies, in particular, those who do business in the US.”   To whip up public hysteria against Germany, the Holocaust industry took out multiple full-page newspaper advertisements in October.

The shakedown of Switzerland and Germany has been only a prelude to the grand finale: the shakedown of Eastern Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, alluring prospects opened up in the former heartland of European Jewry. Cloaking itself in the sanctimonious mantle of “needy Holocaust victims,” the Holocaust industry has sought to extort billions of dollars from these already impoverished countries. Pursuing this end with reckless and ruthless abandon, it has become the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe.

The Holocaust industry doesn’t need a mobilized public opinion. With the support of key US officials, it can easily break the feeble resistance of already prostrate nations.   

To force submission from recalcitrant governments, the Holocaust industry wields the bludgeon of US sanctions.

A vast, well-heeled bureaucracy has sprung up. Insurance companies, banks, art museums, private industry, tenants and farmers in nearly every European country are under the Holocaust industry gun. 
 

Finkelstein reports that various persons and organization still benefit from the Holocaust. He calls that "Capitalizing the Holocaust"
 

Books: Augustus - First Emperor Of Rome By Adrian Goldsworthy

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - "The king is dead, long live the king!" The traditional proclamation, used to announce the immediate transfer of sovereignty from a deceased monarch to their successor, describes also a pivotal phase in the history of the antique Rome. In the year BC 44 Julius Caesar got assassinated, but his death made the way free for Imperator Augustus, the first of a long row of Roman Caesars. The impressive biography "Augustus - First Emperor Of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy describes the development of Rome`s first Imperator and how the Roman republic turned into a hereditary monarchy ( amazon). 

 

       Imperator Caesar Augustus divi filius 

Imperator Caesar Augustus divi filius declared: “Who could be found more magnanimous than I – not to mention again my deceased father – who more nearly divine? For I – the gods be my witnesses! – who have so many gallant soldiers, both Romans and allies, who are devoted to me, I who am supreme over the entire sea within the pillars of Hercules except for a few tribes, I who possess both cities and provinces in every continent . . . when you are all at peace . . . and, greatest of all, are content to yield obedience, I in spite of all this, voluntarily and of my dominion and give up so vast a possession”.

Augustus`stellar career was only possible because of the chaos in the Roman commonwealth during the first century BC and would have been unimaginable in earlier times. But he also was a creation of Julius Caesar himself, who adopted his grandnephew and gave him his name. At eighteen Caesar`s grandnephew ceased to be Caius Octavius and instead became Caius Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar promoted his protege further by giving him important military commands and finally made him the principal heir in his will. 

Augustus did not have the multiple talents of his foster father; he lacked the qualities of an orators, he did not become a successful advocate and was not an eloquent writer, but he was extremely ambitious & unscrupulous and became a very successful warlord. Along Marcus Antonius (Shakespeare`s Mark Antony) he was at the head of the bloody revenge campaign against Brutus and other Caesar assassins and later beat his competitor Antonius in a savage civil war and drove him to suicide. 

Goldsworthy writes: "At some point – perhaps not until the murder of Julius Caesar – Octavius/Augustus determined to be first in the state, and everything he did was directed to this end. Power was not supposed to be inherited at Rome, but armed with his sponsor`s name he rallied the dead dictator’s supporters and proclaimed his intention to assume all of his foster father’s offices and status.To achieve this he had no hesitation in resorting to violence, and so in the years that followed he killed and terrorized, switching alliances as it suited the moment. Ambition was in the blood of any Roman aristocrat, but never before had it been quite so untrammelled by convention nor so openly aimed at winning permanent unrivaled supremacy – but then never before had someone been heir to Julius Caesar, dictator for life and laden with honors greater than any Roman had ever received in the past. The situation in which the young Augustus found himself was as unprecedented as his actions, but his motivation at the very least had strong roots in the traditions of his social class".

 

                          The Wider Good 

Augustus` activity was devoted solely to the immediate end of winning power and defeating his enemies, and probably left no time for anything else. During these years he advertised his connection with Julius Caesar, celebrated the latter’s achievements, sought vengeance for his murder, and at the same time acquired power for himself. Later, in the thirties BC, he began to show more concern for the wider good, beginning to repair and add to the monuments and infrastructure of Rome, and to regulate the food supply of the City. Once again this was sensible politics, but the dedication with which he continued to act in this way was far more than the desire for immediate popularity. Augustus pursued power ruthlessly,

Till the end of his long live Imperator Caesar Augustus remained a warlord whose dominance of the state was based ultimately on his control of far greater military force than anyone else. By modern standards he was and would remain a military dictator, even if he always carefully avoided the title in its Roman sense. For all the display of resigning his powers and reluctant acceptance of the duties pressed on him by the Senate at the start of 27 BC, no one could compel him to do anything as long as he continued to monopolise military power. The legions were his, and the Senate had no real say in how they were run, nor did it any longer control the raising and disbanding of these and other army units.

It was up to Augustus and his advisers to decide on the size and shape of the army they would maintain. They needed to judge how many soldiers were necessary to secure his position against potential Roman rivals as well as how many were required to maintain the empire, defending and, where it was desired, expanding the provinces. The two were closely related. Imperator meant ‘victorious commander’ and it would be seriously damaging to Augustus’ reputation and auctoritas if the empire appeared weak to its foreign neighbors and began to suffer reverses on the frontiers or within the provinces.

In spite of Rome`s military power Augustus did not try to expand the empire. He decided against the conquest of the English Island, displaying the same caution that deterred him from risking war with Parthia, the power in the East, unless it became unavoidable. 

Since Augustus was blessed with a very long life he was able to transform large parts of Europe. Under Augustus widespread cultivation of vines and wine-making began in Gaul, while manufacturers of ceramics responded to the demands of a growing market by establishing workshops in Gaul itself. Use of coinage based on the Roman standard, already widespread in the south, extended over a wider area, fostered particularly wherever the army was based and legionaries inclined to spend their wages.

 

              Begin Of A Dynasty 

Augustus held supreme power for forty-four years. 
In this time had gone from the angry avenger of a murdered father to the unifying elder statesman and ‘father’ of the Roman world. His long life empowered him to start a dynasty and a long line of Roman Casesars. His adopted sons shared his popularity and were being prepared for high office. His daughter – and only actual child – proved less willing to play the part given to her by her father.  

Following the model of his foster father Augusts promoted his wider family, especially his nephew Caius Claudius Marcellus, the son of his sister Octavia. After Marcellus`sudden death Augusts adopted Triberius, the first son of Julius Ceasar´s wife Livia Drusilla, and gave him important offices and provincial commands and named him his principal heir. After Augustus`death Triberius was given powers to those of the princeps (like Julius Caesar & Augustus) and smoothly succeeded Augustus in AD 14.

The Caesar is dead, long live Caesar! 

Books: Exploring the World Of Japanese Craft Sake

  

(Drivebycuriosity) - Do you like Sushi & Sashimi, the freshness, taste & texture of uncooked fish? Then you might also enjoy sake. I was wondering how a relatively plain grain like rice can be turned into such a delicious wine. The book "Exploring the World Of Japanese Craft Sake" by Nancy Matsumoto gives an introduction (amazon ). 

The authors went to sake bars and visited a lot sake brewers and rice farmers and interviewed them. Especially the female co-author focused on the family histories of the sake makers, too much for an introduction book.

But there are also some small informative parts about the different kinds of rice used for brewing, the types of water (minerals) and the regional differences. There is one very short chapter about the alchemy of sake making and explains the chemistry of transforming the starch of the grain into final product and I learned a lot about the use of mold - a special kind of mold - during the transformation process. 

Unfortunately the book is not formatted as an e-book and it looks like a PDF -  very hard to read. I will try to find a better book. 

Books: A Case Of Two Cities - The Curse Of Series

(Drivebycuriosity) - Everyone has to be efficient and productive these days - even writers. It seems that when an author has an idea for a good novel he stretches it out and turns it into a series. Unfortunately the following volumes are seldom good.

This is also true for Qiu Xiaolong`s "Inspector Chen Cao" series. I enjoyed volume 1"Death of a Red Heroine" about a detective in Shanghai in the 1990s (my review ). I liked also Vol 2 & 3, but I gave up reading vol 4 "A Case of Two Cities" after about 50% ( amazon).

This book focuses in corruption in China in the 1990. The subject is not new and the author really inflates it. So it becomes tedious to read again and again about the bad behavior of so many politicians and bureaucrats. There is a lot about Chinese poetry which I found interesting in the first 2 vol. but also got tiresome and slowed the already tardy plot. 

So reading Vol 1 - and maybe Vol 2 & 3 - is worth the time and the money, but not Vol. 4. 

Economics: Why A Shrinking Population Is A Boon

  (Drivebycuriosity) - There is a lot ado about the shrinking populations everywhere. Are we really doomed? I doubt it.

We could learn from history. The Middle Ages already experienced drastic shrinking populations, caused by the plague. In the year 1348 the bubonic plague (Black Death) reduced populations in England and other European countries by more than 30%. As a result the living standard of the survivors rose. 

Food prices fell because fewer people purchased food. The falling demand for food forced the producers to cut their prices. Wages rose because there were fewer farmhands and other workers and the employers had to pay higher salaries.

Today a shrinking population would support the living standard of low income groups. There would be less demand for housing which would reduce rentals and food prices would be constrained. 

A shrinking population is also a big win for the environment and could be the answer to global warming, another favorite subject of the doomsayers. 

Fewer people burn less energy - and they emit fewer greenhouse gases. Fewer people also eat less; therefore the incentive to destroy forests, to gain more land for farming, becomes weaker and the problem of over-fishing disappears.

 

                  More Green & Clean 

A shrinking population also slows down the trend of turning forests & meadows into the sprawl. There is no need for constructing more and more one-family houses, streets, strip malls, store houses & parking places. A shrinking population makes the world more green & clean!

A smaller population is also the answer to another doomster alert: "The robots are coming" And: "Automation will destroy our jobs!"  (" thehill). Both trends are mostly compensating each other: A falling demand for workers, thanks to automation, compensates a declining supply by shrinking populations.

 

                      Industrial Revolution 

Machines have been replacing labor for many centuries. In the middle ages wind & water mills already substituted human & animal labor. In the 18th century followed steam power, starting the industrial revolution. In the recent centuries the ongoing automation process has been raising productivity of labor considerably - and the progress has been accelerating. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is raising the productivity of labor even even further, reducing the demand for human workers even more. 

And there is more: science is making exponential advancements in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence and will support the economy and the labor markets in the coming decades. 

               Less Work, More Income

Today even farmers are using robots, for instance for harvesting strawberries or milking cows (wikipedia). Drones are being used in warehouses and yards for inventory management. Robots also help restaurants to deal with the scarcity of labor.  

"Domino’s Pizza Inc. is putting in place equipment and technology that reduce the amount of labor that is required to produce our dough balls", reports time.com. 3D-printers are also replacing workers, even in construction. "A 3D printer can build the walls of a house in as little as two days versus weeks or months with traditional construction materials" notices today.com.  

 A study by economists John G. Fernald and Charles I. Jones from Stanford & the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco claims that "it becomes possible to replace more and more of the labor tasks with capital" (robinhanson ). Fernald & Jones define capital as physical capital (machines including robots & computers), plus human capital (knowledge & skills) plus discovery of new ideas (inventions like computer, internet etc.). According to them "artificial intelligence and machine learning could allow computers and robots to increasingly replace labor in the production function for goods", meaning that the society can produce more things without increasing hours worked or even with a shrinking labor force. As a result the growth rate of income per person and the long-run growth rate (now around 2%) will rise as well: "The possibility that artificial intelligence will allow machines to replace workers to some extent could lead to higher growth in the future.

 

                 Universal Basic Income

Naive observers claim that a shrinking population reduces the demand for goods & services and will destroy many markets and businesses (noahpinion). These pessimists ignore that demand is the number of potential buyers multiplied with the purchasing power per capita. Thanks to the accelerating technological progress the purchasing power per capita is rising and will overcompensate the shrinking number of consumers.

I reckon that technological progress leads to:

    - rising salaries (for those still working), 

    - climbing dividend incomes and stock market gains 

which will raise the purchasing power of most people - enough to compensate the shrinking number of buyers. Even those who don`t invest in the stock market may participate via pension funds and insurance investments. 

The productivity gains will finally translate into higher tax revenues for the governments (by taxing company profits, dividends & stock market gains). Some day a much greater part of goods & services will be produced by robots and other machines. Then fewer people may work than today and many things will cost less. Then the time could come for an universal basic income, paid to everybody, and financed by productivity gains delivered with automation (driveby ).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books: What I learned From Fuchsia Dunlop`s "Invitation To A Chinese Banquet"

  (Drivebycuriosity) - It seems that almost everybody in the US or in Western Europe knows Chinese food, thanks to the sheer ubiquitous China restaurants everywhere. But the real Chinese cuisine is very different. Fuchsia Dunlop describes in her monumental work "Invitation to a Banquet" the real thing (460 pages  amazon ).

Mrs. Dunlop is the perfect ambassador for China´s cuisine. In the 1990s she studied at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and became a Sichuan chef herself, later she extended her knowledge by traveling all over the country, meeting chefs and tasted sheer countless meals. Dunlop`s "Invitation" is not a cook book, she describes the various incarnations of China´s delights, narrates their history, explains the chemistry and the preparing techniques.

China´s cuisine is far more complex and diversified than most Westerners are aware. It represents a huge country that stretches over many climate zones, from a dry and chilly north to a humid tropical south; and covers mountains and vast coastal areas. China`s art of preparing food developed over at least two thousand years and it is shaped by very different local and regional traditions.

 

                A Kind Of Alchemy  

In spite all the differences there are some commonalities: the Chinese use chopsticks and their cooks cut food into small pieces, so their customers don`t have to use knives. Chinese rarely eat dairy foods, they prefer rice, fermented legumes and tofu and they like food that is sliced, diced and slivered, often prepared by steaming and stir-frying.  

I learned that Chinese cuisine is fundamentally about creating harmony, by transforming, mixing and matching very different ingredients. Mrs. Dunlop writes: "The job of the Chinese cook is to create an almost magical harmony out of contrasting ingredients. Cooking became a consummate skill, even a kind of alchemy". And virtually no ingredient is too humble or too unlikely to resist transformation in the hands of a skilled Chinese chef.
. 

                     Art, Craft & Magic

She claims that Chinese food is art and craft and magic. It is the harnessing of armies of microorganisms; the conjuring of a hundred flavors in a tiny kitchen, the transformation of crude raw materials into myriad forms. It is one of the supreme expressions of human ingenuity.

The Chinese tend to believe that the success of a dish depends less on the nature of the base ingredients than the ability and human knowledge employed in their transformation. For "the rich" intense variety was part of the delight of eating, and the more surprising and unexpected the ingredients, the merrier.

Westeners see the Chinese as rice eaters, but that is only true for the southerners, while northerners prefer wheat in the form of dumplings, noodles, pancakes and breads. The preferences mirror the geographic conditions: While the north is too cold & dry for rice growing, the humid heat in the south supports its growth. Many westeners know the many variations of Italian pasta, but they might not be aware that the northern Chinese have a highly developed culture of pasta-making which is significantly older than the Italian tradition.

The Chinese like soups and sauces, which reminds me of the meals my parents in Southern Germany prepared where I grew up. Mrs. Dunlop believes that the ancient affection for soupy food may have been partly why the Chinese adopted chopsticks as their main eating tool in the first place, because they were so suitable for fishing morsels of food out of a potful of scalding-hot liquid. 

The famous Peking duck - referring the old-fashioned spelling of the capital - is made by a complex process designed to maximize the glossy crispness of the skin and the tender succulence of the flesh, involving inflation with a pump, wind-drying, lacquering with a maltose solution, adding moisture and roasting while hanging in the fierce heat of a domed oven fuelled by a fruitwood fire.

 

                   Oral Pleasures 

According to Mrs. Dunlop the Chinese care about the texture of the food as much as they care about the taste. The introductions to professional recipes typically specify the precise mouthfeel a dish should have, as well as its flavor. For instance fox nuts (an aquatic plant, also known as Prickly Water Lily) have gorgeously crisp, slippery or chewy textures: a whole genre of "beauty in the mouth". 

She describes poetically the oral pleasures of some fish dish: "Pale slices of fish mingle in the broth with tiny, grey-green quills of leaf. Pluck up a leaf with your chopsticks and you will find it coated with a layer of totally transparent jelly. Put it into your mouth, and it will feel shiny and slippery, a perfect match for the silkiness of the fish".

Also: The taste of drunken crab "will be impressed on my tongue for ever. Ice-cold and vividly slimy, with a scintillating kick of liquor, the flesh and ovaries of the crab made me shiver with pleasure. They were as creamily voluptuous as foie gras, yet simultaneously as brisk and arresting as a raw oyster".
 

              Cascade Of Chemical Reactions 

I learned a lot about the chemistry of food & drink preparing. Soy sauce - the archetypal Chinese seasoning - is made by soaking and steaming yellow or black soybeans, mixing them with wheat flour and then leaving them in dark, warm, humid conditions to be colonized by Aspergillus Oryzae molds. The molded beans are combined with salt and water in clay jars and left to ferment and mature; the molds then produce enzymes that break the beany proteins down into delicious amino acids, their oils into fatty acids and their starches into sugars. As the sauce matures, a cascade of further chemical reactions produces a whole array of delicious tastes. 

The character of a soy sauce depends partly on the relative proportions of soybeans and wheat used to make it: the soybean dominates in traditional Chinese soy sauces, giving a darker, richer result, while Japanese use roughly equal proportions of soybeans and wheat, making them lighter, sweeter and tangier.

 

                    Health & Happiness 

Mrs. Dunlop also explains that transforming cereals into wines, ales and other types of liquor presents particular challenges because, unlike grapes and other fruits, they lack accessible sugars that yeasts can devour and turn into alcohol. Before they can be fermented, the starches in the grains have to undergo saccharification, a process of hydrolysis that breaks them up into sugars that yeasts can digest. 

Making alcohol from grains is always a multi-stage process, more complicated than fermenting wine from grapes – which, is spontaneous and ‘practically unavoidable’ because of the sugars in the fruit and the yeasts on their skins. Since grains, unlike grapes, have no natural enthusiasm for fermentation, they need encouragement. In northern Europe, malted grains are used to coax cereals into beer

Mrs. Dunlop`s resume:

The key principles of ordering a Chinese meal are balance on the one hand and variety on the other, with the strenuous avoidance of repetition. 

The subtlety of Chinese gastronomy, with its minute discernment in matters of cutting, cooking, flavor and mouthfeel, is unparalleled anywhere.

"Perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned from China is how to eat simultaneously for health and happiness".

PS I used images from a tasting menu by Cantonese chef Chef Qiu Xiaogui that I had enjoyed at Bangkok`s Yu Ting Yuan restaurant.

Economics: Why The Inflation Fears Are Overblown

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - There is a lot ado about inflation. The Iran war pushed oil prices higher and amplified the price jumps caused by the tariff hikes. But I suppose that both influences are just temporary and the inflation hike will teeter out.

                  Helicopter Money 

We learned from Milton Friedman that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". The money volume, the amount of money available in the whole economy, restricts how much people can spend for goods & services. If they - for in instance - pay higher prices for imported goods, then they purchase fewer of them or they spend less for other goods & services.

Friedman`s insight got confirmed by the recent inflation wave. It was caused by a deluge of money in the years 2020 & 2021. In 2020 & 2021 the government flooded the economy with stimulus checks in the value of trillions of dollars to fight the Covid19 recession (American Rescue Plan). The government checks got financed with massive bond purchases by the Federal Reserve (Quantitative Easing known as QE1,QE2 & QE3).

The government money landed directly on the bank accounts of the Americans, blowing up the money volume M2 (bank notes & coins & deposits at banks). Milton Friedman described this as helicopter money (cato ). As a result in 2021 & 2022 the US money supply M2, the engine of the inflation, jumped 40%. 

Unfortunately the money deluge met a constrained supply of goods & services partly - partly because of Covid19. So the price level inevitably had to jump and the inflation rate (first derivation) went up.

                         Causal Relationship

The causal relationship between the money supply and inflation was already recognized by Nicolaus Copernicus! The astronomer explained in the year 1517 why "too much money" causes inflation. Copernicus` "quantity theory of money" is based on observations: Early in the 16th century Spain conquered today`s Latin America and looted the silver stocks. The Spaniards send the precious metal to Europe where it was printed into coins and used as money.

As a result the European money supply jumped, but the supply of goods & services did not change much. The flood of money raised suddenly the demand for scarce goods & services and caused a jump of the price level.

Elaborated studies by Milton Friedman, Karl Brunner, Allan Meltzer and many other economists (known as Monetarists) confirmed Copernicus & the quantity theory of money. They described in the 1960s elaborately how and why the inflation rate follows the growth rate of money with a time lag (causal connection).
 

 

 ( source)

 

But the money deluge has ended. Today the US inflation is constrained by the slowly growing US money supply. In the recent months M2, the engine of inflation, grew just 4.7%. Simultaneously the US economy, represented by the GDP, advanced 1.6%. There is not much space for price hikes and inflation will run out of fuel.