2011 San Pellegrino world top restaurant ranking

See here the top 1-50. And I am proud to note that I have tried by now 4 places in the 2011 world top 12, namely:

• Noma (1): been there twice already, see here impressions (and some pictures) from the first time, the second was a lunch in October last year-- still have to get hold of those pictures online somewhere. Vale?
• Alinea (6): been there exactly a month ago, details yet to come.
• Per Se (10): visited for lunch during a brief but intense visit to NYC in November 2010, promised I would write impressions soon. I liked it more than Alinea, for starters...
• Les Créations de Narisawa (12): end 2009, there is a whole saga behind this. This is also the one place that I believe still has a lot of growing chances. Can only go up in the world rankings, looking forward to seeing that materialize.

Remark as well that Noma, Alinea and Narisawa are respectively the 2011 top restaurants on the three continents I know (to a little extent) so far. 

Shawms and bagpipes

Superlative medieval tones, and a combined use of Romanian & Latin lyrics, in Mille Anni Passi Sunt. Plus, you cannot afford to miss my other personal favourites (including videoclips of live --ad litteram-- shows): Dulcissima, O Varium Fortune, Venus Vina Musica, Totentanz, Chou Chou Sheng, Ballade de Mercy, Suam Elle Ires. A total medieval feast, by the extremely creative Corvus Corax!

(with credits to The Eclectic Metalhead, and YouTube).

Tough times for young economists

The Economist has also been at the ASSA-Atlanta (this year I've been busy with the more scientific, and less applied, section). Some other potential (academic) implications of the 20+ % less vacancies in '09, compared to '08 (and earlier):

• the high time for places from Europe (in particular, Denmark and The Netherlands need to make the good moves right now...) to (seriously) tempt some (serious) top candidates (from both US and European prestigious schools). They do have to outmaneuver Canada in that realm (and-- to some extent-- the far East, Australia included).
• temporary postdoctoral positions might become more fashionable... even among economists
• prestigious postdoctoral grant programs have started to be really in demand (e.g. witness the increase in the number of applications for the-- several types of-- Marie Curie independent grants within the EU Commission FP7 program, ECO panel). Which made it more challenging for yours truly, but doable :-).
• per ensemble, it is not all bad news, indeed: some of these implications move us closer to the jobs market of junior natural scientists, which I believe is one positive consequence of the drama

New Renaissance in European Research...

The First Report of the European Research Area Board.

Now, overall this looks like a great step ahead and I would like to see it indeed as a commitment (by the ERAB, the Commission, the relevant decision makers). It is easy to note the pros, so I shall highlight briefly what I see as major cons therein. They [the ERA Board] do cite Schuman, "Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity" (emphasis added), but some of their proposals/ intentions/ targets are anything but concrete/ focused/ rational. One also hopes that the list of "six broad areas in which [they] believe action must be taken" de facto starts with "the encouragement of excellence", on paper only item number 5... And that the gender affirmative action envisaged really means equality of opportunity and never gender choice prevailing over merit... And that the multi-disciplinarity so much talked about is supposed to arise naturally, not to be imposed a priori... I guess they still need that serious research appendix to the "New Renaissance".

My whereabouts

After a full week in very beautiful (and very hot) Seville, where inter alia I presented a paper at this year's ESPE conference (I will dedicate of course a separate post to my Seville experience a.s.a.p, hence further details will be omitted here), followed by a short pit stop of a few hours back in Aarhus, I have just arrived in Os, very close to Bergen. I am staying at this sensationally picturesque place called Solstrand, truly a perfect combination of classic and modern, romantic and pragmatic (e.g., one might have have difficulties deciding which of the several swimming pools or saunas to try out, after having had a perfect walk--or swim!-- along the fjords... :-))..., where for the next couple of days I'll be listening to, discussing and presenting papers within the 2009 Nordic Summer Institute in Labour Economics. Be good, I'll be back!

PS. Some straightforward differences between Seville (or, attempting to generalize: Spain/ Iberia/ Southern Europe) and Bergen (Norway/ Scandinavia/ Northern Europe) really have to do with numbers, ie. temperature degree and, respectively, price differentials. You can most likely sign those differences yourselves :-).

Sunday night econlinks

• Bilingualism and early child development: very interesting brand-new research in PNAS (institutional or individual subscription needed, else only abstract is free). And yes, bilingualism clearly pays off, if you were wondering.

• Vienna and the largest Swiss cities top Mercer's quality of living index for '09, while Munich appears to be the winner if you account simultaneously for both quality of living (position 7) and infrastructure (position 2). "München mag Dich" indeed, as they say.

• There are many problems with (some of) these suggestions concerning reforming the academe and pre-academe, but there should indeed be a continuous debate on these issues. Proposals 3,4 and 5 could be ok with me in the current format; the other three are presented in an unnecessary radical perspective, despite being debated many times before and shown not to be that simple as they seem at first sight. Via Gabi Istrate, on Ad Astra. An interesting corrolary here is the following: why not decentralize completely the process and leave it up to each university to organize itself as it fits it best (e.g. by offering tenure or not, by having "generalist" or "specialist" departments etc) ? In the long run the best academic/educational system would win (by attracting the best/most students, by generating the highest-earning/most succesful graduates etc.)? Of course, to some extent these differences exist even now, but more among "unusual" types of academic/research institutes and "typical" universities.

• Going Dutch -- the article would like to give an "American perspective", but ends somewhere midway and misses much of what I would have expected. Oh, and 18 months... come on! After 18 months you know yet nothing about Amsterdam, not to mention the whole of Netherlands (even after long discussions with Geert Mak) ... I'd love to read his opinions after 80 months... As for 'Socialism gone Wild', the author could try his chance a bit more to the North of Europe :-).

Beware the Euronomics. Plus some further thoughts on the economics curricula in Romania and The Netherlands

Retain at least the conclusion of this excellent article (applying, unfortunately, well beyond just France and Germany, within EU or Europe in general), which draws attention to the enormous, though often neglected*, importance of (high) school economics education, with emphasis on the (very real) risks of learning absolute nonsense from state-sponsored economics courses.

"If countries like France and Germany hope to get their nations on a new economic track, they might start paying more attention to what their kids are learning in the classroom".

(HT to Greg Mankiw)

Further remarks: in some very recent EU members, the indoctrination with anti-market bias (or, more so: simply flawed, baseless ideas, debunked decades ago) is carried on within university level economics courses. That is at least doubling the harm, by directly affecting the local would-be economic 'elite'. And yes, I am particularly hinting to the fantastic Romanian economics curricula and textbooks (which I had again the pleasure to talk about, with Romanian economics students and lecturers, in my short recent visit to Romania), designed or written by renowed academic economists with hundreds of published articles... in every morning newspaper (see here an older entry of mine, in Romanian, inter alia counting the total number of peer-reviewed ISI-publications-- ISI set which is enormous and very heterogenous, as we all know, hardly an indicator of quality, when taken as a whole-- within Economics, for 2006, having at least one co-author with a Romanian affiliation-- any university or other research institute in Romania, that is; or see directly on the Ad Astra site precisely which were those articles and where from (some are not even from Econ departments...), for 2005 (2 articles), 2006 (3 articles), 2007 (3 articles)-- btw, these are not typos: the number of articles is indeed for the whole country, for all ISI-recognized Economics journals, for those entire years). Before the economic curriculum gets to be reformed (or, allow me to rephrase: thrown out and started all over, from scratch), take my advice and do all you can to study university level economics somewhere else, anywhere else...

* in some EU countries, such as the Netherlands, the high-school economics curriculum has been recently the topic of intense public debates, hence there "often neglected" (see starting paragraph of this post) does not apply strictly. A government-sponsored commission having among the members some top Dutch academic economists (the head of the commission was Coen Teulings, who-- sort of disclaimer :-)-- also happens to be my PhD advisor and co-author in a couple of projects) was asked to thoroughly investigate the economics curriculum and to come up with an assessment and eventual reform proposals. Their report, entitled "Economie moet je doen" (my translation: "You have to do Economics") can be downloaded here, in PDF format (relevant only for those who can read Dutch; unfortunately, I am not aware of a translation in English). This report has been and to some extent is still under attack by some other (typically older generation) economists from the Netherlands, but I have to say, with the caveat of not having followed all the discussions in this context, that so far I have not found any convincing argument on the critics' side.

Econlinks for 22-04-'07

• Susan Athey is the new winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. I had her on my potential list of winners, of course, but I really put Ed Glaeser highest on that list since he was at the age limit of the candidates for the medal (40), while Susan Athey could have also been nominated in 2 years from now, in principle. So I lost that bet :-). I think Susan Athey totally deserves this prestigious award. What is special about this year's prize is that Athey is the first woman to receive the medal and possibly one of the youngest winners, as well.
• an entry on what sociologists learned about economists. Looks pretty interesting, I'll follow up on those links. And rather negative, but that's no news from our sociologist colleagues...
• a nice article in the Economist (from a few editions ago) about the 'frowning clown' that both Democrats and Republicans are terribly afraid of, Stephen Colbert. It comes at the right time, since I've just posted an entry on a hillarious "hot Stephen" clip (this previous one about the 10 commandments, that the Economist article linked above also mentions, was equally funny- I talked about it here, but the corresponding YouTube was removed... ).
• The NY Times has published today a very interesting guide to "affordable Europe". 15 major cities are overviewed. The intention is excellent (and very welcome!), but at first sight I find the guide quite rough, missing a lot of information (for the cities from that list where I've been living for quite a while, like Amsterdam or London). Unless Americans really have different tastes, there are much better places (equally cheap) where to go in these cities...

And this is my 300th blog post! That calls for celebration. Though I'll probably postpone a proper celebration for the next weekend.

Update, May 11th, '07: I've just discovered that Steven Levitt has a different idea (well, speculation) of who might have been the runners up for the John Bates Clark Medal (all Chicago economists, of course :-)).

Remodeling Europe's churches (with a focus on Transylvania's old 'fortress churches')

This is a very, very interesting article from Newsweek International about the status of old churches throughout all of Europe (with pros and cons to maintaining or converting them etc). Inter alia, they do not forget mentioning Paradiso, one of the most famous clubs in Amsterdam (and certainly one of my favourites), obtained by transforming an old church.

When analysing the situation of the old churches in Eastern Europe, the authors also mention the problems of maintaining Transylvania's grand "fortress churches". Indeed, rather than building a bunch of new crap churches everywhere in the big cities of Romania, churches that appear like mushrooms after rain, really (see also Claudiu's post, in Romanian, about the churches that invaded my own neighborhood, in Cluj Napoca), one should take care of the old great churches and see that such marvels of architecture are not lost (converting them in musea is something I would not see a very bad idea at all: this is not so much about religion as about preserving history and architecture, Transylvanian identity, if you want). The corresponding fragment from the article reads:

Ebbing faith is not the only reason for the abundance of disused churches. The atheist communist regimes of the 20th century, war and demographic shifts have all played a part. Take Transylvania's grand "fortress churches," which once served the region's large German-speaking community, descendants of settlers from the west who came to Romania in medieval times. Mass emigration since the 1970s has reduced the population to just a few thousand, and Gypsies have often repopulated the deserted villages. "The new residents just don't have the financial capacity or the emotional need to look after these churches," says Csilla Hegedus of the Transylvania Trust, which is seeking to preserve the buildings. The government's not much help. "The Ministry of Culture gives us what it can, but in countries emerging from the poverty of communism, it's difficult for them to give all that's necessary," says Hegedus.