Monthly Archives: January 2012

Europe again

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C. Fred Bergsten and Jacob Kierkegaard think Europe will pull things together and the Euro will not collapse. The frequent crises there in the last year derive from a game of "chicken" by actors trying to stick each other with as much as possible of the cost of averting a collapse; all actors recognize that whatever fraction they end up bearing, the cost to them of doing what it takes to prevent collapse, is much less than the cost of collapse, they say.

At The Monkey Cage, it's pointed out that games of chicken sometimes end badly. I think Bergsten and Kierkegaard are quite aware of this, but it's interesting that they think it's unlikely to happen in this instance. Their advice regarding Euro zone leaders, to "watch what they do, not what they say" is clearly worth remembering, as the events and words leading up to the ECB action on credit via European banks indicate.

For me, the threat of an actual collapse of the Euro, or of the European banking system, diminished greatly when the ECB proffered its three-year loans of 450 billion or so Euros to European banks last December. The banks used some of it to buy Euro area sovereign bonds (Bergsten and Kierkegaard claim that they were under pressure from the ECB to do that; I've read elsewhere that these bonds were actually required as collateral, but I don't have the source handy so can't vouch for it). What bothers me most about their analysis is that while mentioning optimal currency area theory, they don't go into it in any depth. A key point, to which they give some but perhaps not enough attention, is the imbalance in terms of trade caused by areas with very different cost structures, such as Portugal, Spain, and even Italy, sharing a currency with Germany. They seem to think that "structural reforms", especially of the labor market, will fix that. In fact, in their reading (and also in that of many opponents of Euro area austerity and ECB's relatively tight monetary policies) a main goal of the ECB is to get such structural---and political, if necessary---change in some of the Euro area countries. I think they underestimate the difficult of getting this done---especially if it goes hand in hand with "austerity". They do recognize the need for growth:

Even the most successful financial engineering in the euro
area will ultimately fail, however, if the debtor countries,
and indeed the region as a whole, are unable to restore at
least modest economic growth in the fairly near future. This
requires at least three major steps:
* The borrowing countries must adopt convincing progrowth
structural reforms, especially in their labor
markets, as well as budgetary austerity.
* The strong economies in the northern core of Europe,
especially Germany, must terminate their own fiscal
consolidations for a while and adopt new expansionary
measures, i.e., they should buy more Italian and Greek
goods and services rather than debt instruments.
* The ECB must promptly reduce its policy interest rate
by at least another 50 basis points and buy sufficient
amounts of periphery bonds through the SMP to help
push their interest rates down to sustainable levels.

Do they really have confidence that to save the Euro Germany will loosen its fiscal policy enough to create a significant boost to the European "periphery" from trade, and that the ECB will loosen monetary policy enough to offset their prescribed austerity in the periphery, and boost Euro periphery growth (from trade and from credit availability)? I guess they are saying that they do. There's a lot of room for political turmoil here if it doesn't happen this way, and what current heads of state and Euro institution leaders think may in that case not end up being the determining factor. Also, EU leaders will is one thing, but many actors' notions of "expansionary austerity" seem to be rooted in a misunderstanding of economic dynamics. ECB president Draghi's background is somewhat reassuring here, but he's not the only actor, and even he seems to be playing off a willingness to do macro stabilization against other goals of political and economic reform.

Regarding the budget rules that are part of the new fiscal institution building Bergsten and Kierkegaard are so partial to, conservative (but reality-based) economist Martin Feldstein on European austerity is worried: How to Create a Depression contains as good a description as any of the Keynesian (or neo-Keynesian, if you like, in the sense of post-WWII US macroeconomics) notion of automatic fiscal stabilization.

Feldstein does not succumb to the temptation that attracts many right-wing hacks (he, of course, is not a hack), and even many proudly centrist folk (including hacks) who are not terribly well informed on economics, to take all Eurozone deficits as evidence of fiscal irresponsiblility:

Italy, Spain, and France all have deficits that exceed 3% of GDP. But these are not structural deficits, and financial markets would be better informed and reassured if the ECB indicated the size of the real structural deficits and showed that they are now declining. For investors, that is the essential feature of fiscal solvency.

An important part of the deficit agreement in December is that member states may run cyclical deficits that exceed 0.5% of GDP – an important tool for offsetting declines in demand. And it is unclear whether the penalties for total deficits that exceed 3% of GDP would be painful enough for countries to sacrifice greater countercyclical fiscal stimulus.

The most frightening recent development is a formal complaint by the European Central Bank that the proposed rules are not tough enough. Jorg Asmussen, a key member of the ECB’s executive board, wrote to the negotiators that countries should be allowed to exceed the 0.5%-of-GDP limit for deficits only in times of “natural catastrophes and serious emergency situations” outside the control of governments.

Perhaps this is just part of the game of chicken. Certainly it's heartening that the December ECB agreeement does explicitly distinguish between structural and cyclical sources of deficits, and foresee a role for automatic fiscal stabilization through cyclical deficits. But one worries: to what extent does Asmussen represent a broader consensus at the ECB, and what will they do---how long will they drag things out, how tight will they keep money---to try to get their way. And what would be the consequences if they do? Is the economic story of the Eurozone for the next decade or two going to be a continuing game of chicken, accompanied by stagnation? Will this be politically tenable?

Thoughts on the evolution of technology-using intelligence

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A few more thoughts inspired by Tim Maudlin's remarks in an interview with the Atlantic magazine. I'll quote Tim again first:

The question remains as to how often, after life evolves, you'll have intelligent life capable of making technology. What people haven't seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It's not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that's not true. Obviously it doesn't matter that much if you're a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there's a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence. There is just too much we don't know.

Certainly it is remarkable that only one technology-using (if you discount a few cases of the most rudimentary use of natural objects, and perhaps a few cases of very rudimentarily modified objects, as tools by other animals) species has evolved on Earth. An interesting question is whether most planets that do evolve life eventually evolve species that produce and use complex technology, and how many such species. My guess, certainly not supported by long consideration, but by a modest amount of offhand thought, is that given enough time, they do. My guess is also that it takes a fair amount of time for evolution to produce such a species, and that this is part of an overall evolution towards increasing complexity, in some sense I'll here leave ill-defined, of the overall web of life on the planet, and in particular, of the most complex species on the planet. (Perhaps the notions of complexity explored by Charles Bennett, Murray Gell-Mann, and Seth Lloyd may be relevant.) Since the environment in which organisms must survive and propagate evolution consists in significant measure of other organisms, evolution itself creates new niches in this environment for organisms to evolve toward filling. As Robinson Jeffers wrote:

What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?

While I don't see a clear and obvious argument for it offhand, it is plausible to me that this process tends over time to create more and more complexity. In this sense, I suspect there is "progress" in evolution, despite a fair amount of scoffing in some quarters at the notion of evolutionary progress. This looks like a fruitful area for research. It's also plausible that this sort of evolutionary progress may eventually create both a niche for, and an accessible evolutionary path towards, a technology-using intelligent species. Whether the fact that we have only a single such species on this planet is due primarily to their being essentially only one niche for such a species, to the fact that it takes a long time for such a species to evolve due to the many precursor steps necessary (this would need to be a rather tricky anthropic argument, I suspect), or just happenstance, seems even more speculative, but very interesting.

So it seems to me I find myself supporting, at least speculatively, what may seem the naive, knee-jerk view "that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward". With allowance for a metaphorical use of "striving", and modification of the definite article ("the thing"), I'm not too unhappy with that characterization. How far things go beyond "the intelligence we have", though, I'm not prepared to say. And it may be that there are very different paths for a planetary ecosystem to take, other than the production of one (or a few?) technology-using species. As Tim says, in the end we really don't know. But I do think there is interesting knowledge to be sought here.

Tim Maudlin on the training of physicists, the evolution of intelligence, and more

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I had to link this interview with philosopher Tim Maudlin, in the Atlantic, when I read his observation that "The asking of fundamental physical questions is just not part of the training of a physicist anymore." But there's a lot more of interest in the interview as well. I found the article via Andrew Sullivan's blog; Sullivan found Tim's thoughts on the evolution of intelligence to be particularly interesting:

What people haven't seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It's not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that's not true. Obviously it doesn't matter that much if you're a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there's a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence. There is just too much we don't know.

Indeed there is, but it points out some very interesting questions: is there a tendency, given enough time, for a species intelligent enough to produce technology to arise on an earth-like planet? Is there, perhaps, a tendency for it to inhibit the evolution of other such species? My personal guess (and it's just that, a guess, not supported by careful thought) is that there is such a tendency, but it takes a lot of time, it builds on, and is part of, a slow increase in the complexity of the most complex organisms. This is, of course, probably the "knee-jerk" view. Whether it inhibits the evolution of other species is something I'm less willing to speculate on (though if Neanderthals were another such species, we may have some evidence (one case!) for inhibition of the branching of a potentially technologically-capable intelligent species into two such species). Whether vertebrates have characteristics making it more likely for them to evolve technologically-capable intelligence than it is for, say, insects to evolve it is another interesting question.

Stravinsky's "Les Noces" (Svadebka) on Hyperion (Voronezh, New London)

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I finally listened to my Hyperion CD of a 1990 recording of Stravinsky's "Les Noces" (Svadebka, The Wedding), with the New London Chamber Choir and Ensemble, directed by James Wood, and The Voronezh Chamber Choir, directed by Oleg Shepel. Stunning. I knew this work previously through the Bernstein/English Bach Festival Orchestra and Choir version on Deutsche Grammophon.  In that version, I found it an interesting work, but a bit hard to sit through the whole thing repeatedly.  Bernstein's version emphasized the percussive aspects.  I probably was moved to buy the Hyperion version by composer John Adams' praise for it on his blog, Hellmouth.  The NL/Voronezh version is much more nuanced and for me, balances percussiveness and aggression better with lyricism.  It has superb sound overall, with a fairly realistic, broad and deep soundstage and good hall atmospherics.  I'm not completely sure how naturally it was achieved---there are either drummers on each side of the stage, or the drums were recorded with multiple mikes and mixed with excessive stereo separation of the different drums, but it sounds good overall.  Very sweet and clear instrumental timbres, and extremely good resolution of accompanying instruments allowing subtle details of the piece to be heard.  I found some of the higher female voices to sound a bit thin and perhaps distorted at times (could be my system, or an issue with microphone preamps (distortion) or with mixing or even the actual voices (thinness)).  But overall the quality of the voices and singing, and the recording of them, is excellent.

Musically, the piece sounds like it could have been a predecessor, rather than, as it actually was, a successor, to the Rite of Spring.  It provides a more relaxed, less avant-garde setting than Rite for exploring the folk-music-based modes, and the percussiveness and somewhat dissonant chord extensions, and the occasional use of multiple modal melodies in dissonant counterpoint, that provide a lot of the musical language of Rite.  Even before reading it in the liner notes, you sense that the often arranged, and highly ritualized, Russian peasant weddings being portrayed, are a less extreme analog of the sacrifice in Rite, though with less predictably dire results, from a modern point of view.  And in the hands of this ensemble, the piece's goal of portraying the human drama of such an event (or at least, the version Stravinsky wants us to experience), is fully achieved.  Though similarities to Rite are there, the texture and mood are overall quite different.  I'd earlier not thought Noces to be even nearly on the level of the great triumvirate of Firebird, Petrushka, and the Rite, but on the strength of this recording, I now think it's close.

9.5 overall for this CD on my 10 point scale that goes to 11.

 

 

John Rangel / Michael Anthony ---- jazz duet at El Meson, Santa Fe

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El Meson has excellent tapas and excellent live music, often jazz, in its bar and jazz room, ¡Chispa!.  (I've never eaten in the main dining room.)  For a long time Thursdays were given over to local pianist John Rangel (who moved to Santa Fe a few years back from Los Angeles) playing duets with different guest musicians.  I've enjoyed John's playing in a variety of settings, and I heard him with Albuquerque-based guitarist Michael Anthony (another LA transplant with lots of film recording credits to his name) last Nov. 17 (2011).  It was a very enjoyable evening of jazz, with the musicians playing close attention to each other and creating different moods and interludes on the fly.  Exchanges of "fours" and such were especially interesting.  I didn't take notes, and a run-through would be pointless anyway, but the repertoire was a lot of standards, jazz classics, some bossa and samba, and blues.   Fairly straightahead bop and post bop, played with a sophisticated harmonic sense and plenty of chromaticism on the part of both players, but nothing too far-out.  I definitely recommend going to any gig John is playing on... he is frequently to be heard with the Tribute Trio (w/ Michael Glynn on bass, Cal Haines on drums), either on their own or with guest horn players.

Tapas at El Meson are often superb---the Cordoban style fried eggplant ($9.50) is very fresh-tasting, almost sweet, and practically melts in your mouth---it is especially good in late summer when eggplant is in season, but always worthwhile.  House-roasted peppers in a little earthenware terrine with Spanish goat cheese ($7.50) are also superb.  I like fried oysters with Romesco sauce ($9.50) as well.  Setas a la Parilla ($9.50), oyster mushrooms grilled with garlic, parsley, and olive oil, are also excellent, if less exotic.   The sherries by the glass have all been excellent as well.

Highly recomended for both food and music.

Bill in Congress would prevent NIH from providing open access to taxpayer-funded research

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NIH has long required its grantees to provide open access to all articles produced using its funding.  Now, as described in this New York Times editorial, there's a bill in Congress that would kill this open access policy.  Offhand, I don't agree with the writer's suggestion that the principle should be "if taxpayers paid for it, they own it", in the sense suggested in the next sentence, that all work produced with government funding should be excluded from copyright.  But I do believe there should be open access to government-funded research.

 

 

2009 Domaine Arlaud Bourgogne "Roncevie"

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I picked up a bottle of the Domaine Arlaud Bourgogne "Roncevie" at the Casa Sena wine shop in Santa Fe the other day. (Warm thanks to PJ there for the recommendation.) Tried it last night with dinner. Very fresh and pure-tasting Pinot Noir. Light to medium-bodied, but reasonably intense with what seems to me a very Burgundian makeup---fine but somewhat mouth-coating tannins, a slight bit of smokiness or caramel (from oak, probably) overlaying bright fruit, primarily strawberry or perhaps cherry-like flavors. Reasonably velvety and well-integrated, and getting a bit more intense over the course of the meal. Not extraordinarily complex, but delicious. As I recall this wasn't inexpensive (Burgundy, unfortunately, never is), but pretty impressive for the price. It has the rare and pleasing taste of a natural, minimally messed with, clean and alive wine. A find I'm very happy with. I might rate it 8.5 or 9 on a 10 point scale, but it's basically a perfect example of what it is---a delicious, not overweening red Bourgogne. It went very well with a dinner of Venetian style smothered cabbage (finely shredded and slow cooked with sauteed onion, garlic, and a little red wine vinegar) and a pasta sauced with collard and mustard greens, white beans, and tomatoes.

A look at the importer's (North Berkeley Wine's) website reveals some information about Domaine Arlaud, which is based in the great Côtes-de-Nuits wine town of Morey St.-Denis, and about the 2008 vintage of this wine. According to this, Roncevie is surrounded by vineyards designated Gevrey-Chambertin, which helps explain its quality.

My email

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My email address is no longer at Perimeter Institute, since I'm no longer there. My institutional affiliation is with the University of New Mexico, where I'm Adjunct Professor of physics and astronomy. However, the best way to contact me is at the following email address, given in a roundabout way to discourage spam: first part is the first letter of my first name followed by the letter "n" followed by my last name (see top of this blog for my name), and then "@aol". Dot com, of, course. Nothing need be capitalized.

Jaffurs 2010 Syrah

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Jaffurs is a Santa Barbara, California area winery that makes wines from Rhône varietal grapes. Everything I've ever tried of theirs has been excellent. The 2010 Syrah is truly outstanding, and based on a half-bottle, drinking very well now. It seemed more open, less tannic, much more hedonistic than other Jaffurs Syrahs I've had at this stage in their lives. (I realize now that this may be because the others were single-vineyard wines, whereas this is their Santa Barbara County offering.) But just as complex, perhaps more complex. Very balanced, somewhat velvety, mixing sweet fruit flavors like blueberry, maybe boysenberry, maybe raspberry with darker, more mineral and spicy notes. Some vanilla notes as well. My only worry about this wine is whether, at 14.7% alcohol and already seeming relatively open, it will age well. But the flavors are so intense and well integrated with each other that it's a pretty good bet. It does not taste at all "hot" (overalcoholic) despite the high percentage. It may mature faster than other Jaffurs Syrahs. Evolving
somewhat in the glass...getting a bit more tannic and slightly less velvety, with different aspects of the flavor coming to the fore at different times. Definitely up there with the best Syrahs I've had, of any type. Expensive (direct from the winery, it's $15 for a half bottle, $27 a bottle, before shipping), but worth it.