2008/10/28 22:55
Many Indian cookbooks are mostly about Indian home cooking. The food is nice, but it's not what you encounter in Indian restaurants here.However, some years ago I bought a most astonishing cookbook: The Curry Secret.It's a small paperback without any photos, but is teaches you how to do Indian restaurant cooking at home.The trick is to make a basic curry...
2008/10/24 21:57
I have been noticing recently that some products in Asda have been labelled as being Delia cheat ingredients.This intrigued me, so I bought the book on Google.It's basically a cookbook for when you're in a rush, so lots of the ingredients are frozen or from tins or boxes.Lots of the recipes look really nice, although I think some of them...
2008/10/29 23:41
On the bus to work this morning, I read a letter to the editor by Mr. G. C. King in The Herald suggesting a solution to the rising number of repossessions: “The UK government can promptly pass a law that says any lender repossessing a house must accept the proceeds of sale in full settlement of the outstanding debt. If the outstanding loan is £100k and a forced sale releases only £60k, the bank cannot pursue the borrower for the balance.”
On the bus back home this evening, I then read an article in The Economist suggesting that a big problem with the housing market in the US is that this is the case, because it gives people an incentive to run away from their home and their mortgage as soon as they go into negative equity. They just send the keys to the mortgage lender, and they’re free again. This means that they’re not motivated to find alternative ways to pay their mortgage, and more homes than necessary end up being repossessed.
So what is the solution? Clearly the British system is bad because it gives the lender an incentive to repossess early rather than giving borrowers payment holidays or the like, and the American system is just as flawed, just in the opposite way.
It seems a system should be found whereby both parties share the pain. For instance, if a house is repossessed and doesn’t bring in enough money to pay off the remainder of the mortgage, the resulting debt should be split equally between the lender and the borrower. Would this work?
2008/10/27 23:35
I've found a few nice web sites about the upcoming US presidential election.First and most importantly, FiveThirtyEight is a great site if you're into opinion polls. The guy running it does a lot of number crunching based on published polls (and makes nice illustrations), and in addition he writes interesting blog postings.In addition (and linked to from 5:38), Electoral-vote.com has nice maps updated on a daily basis.Finally, and on a more light-hearted note, The Economist's Global Electoral College is asking...
2008/10/25 23:05
Det er interessant at se Kristendemokraternes formandsudskiftning. Det forekommer mig at være et evigt splittet parti.I begyndelsen af 1990erne, da jeg var ret aktiv i Radikal Ungdom, havde vi et glimrende samarbejde med Kristeligt Folkepartis Ungdom, der var domineret af unge, der ikke var ret kristne, men blot havde fokus på etiske problemstillinger.Jeg mener også, det var i de år,...
2008/10/22 22:23
Marcel has found the most amazing Japanese TV show on Challenge (Sky channel 125).It's called Ultimate Banzuke and shows Japanese people jumping through obstacle courses on pogo sticks, walking on dominos, and so on.I found an example on YouTube:
2008/10/20 22:57
I've almost completed reading Brian Sykes's The Seven Daughters of Eve.I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the first two thirds, although the book is a tiny bit out of date. It's one of those nice examples of popular science that...
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