Cook Better With The Science Of Taste

After coming to an interest in cooking late in life, I have my own way of doing the job - such as a disdain for recipes. Instead, this recent link summarises an alternative - working from the basics. Like all clever people, this writer proves I have been right all along.

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/12/learn-to-make-any-dish-you-cook-better-with-the-science-of-taste/

Gottliebsen's view that Hockey made the right call

I have always had high regard for Robert Gottleibsen's views, and this piece gives perspective on the government's rejection of the GrainCorp bid. It is interesting for a free market believer to make this call on an exception. Note that he acknowledges other views.

Robert Gottliebsen December 2, 2013

"In my view Treasurer Joe Hockey made the correct call on GrainCorp. If GrainCorp can find the right management and directors, the company now has the opportunity to be the ‘Big Australian’ of agriculture. In other words it could duplicate, in agriculture, what BHP Billiton has done in minerals.

Australia has set up agriculture as the next major growth industry for the nation. But the world of agriculture is changing and the rewards of the industry are going to the transporters and processors of agricultural products. If agriculture is indeed going to be a growth industry we will need a national champion in those growth areas. And GrainCorp is our one and only opportunity to have such a champion. 

Joe Hockey almost certainly made his decision without my assistance. But as the treasurer and his people were deliberating last week I set out very clearly why the losers in the GrainCorp proposal were the farmers and the Australian nation. The winners were the management and, in the short term, the shareholders (Will pay dirt slip through farmers' hands?, November 25).

Of course I recognise that my colleague Stephen Bartholomeusz and others have a different view (ADM's rejection goes against the grain of logic, November 29).

I always respect and admire Steve’s views and analysis but sometimes we disagree. This is one such occasion.

In my view, the three main reasons stated for agreeing to the takeover of GrainCorp either do not stack up of are offset by the disadvantages. People like the Business Council of Australia indicate that the GrainCorp rejection will frighten off overseas investors. Overseas investors only have to look at how we approved the Canadians bid for Warrnambool Cheese in a way that severely disadvantaged local bidders to see that there is no general anti-foreign bias.

Most realistic overseas investors would understand that bids to change a national infrastructure company, which provides the lifeline for the farming community, into an international player in competition for capital and resources with rival overseas agricultural industries will usually be blocked.

The second reason that is touted is that Archer Daniels Midland would have provided the $250 million to $500 million required to improve the GrainCorp infrastructure. In the last 10 days I have addressed the trustees of more than 1500 self-managed superannuation funds. If a proper agricultural infrastructure company is set up then Australia can raise that money very easily. And setting up that structure must be the first task of GrainCorp management. I have no doubt that Archer Daniels Midland would have been aware of the global thirst for good infrastructure investment projects. However they may not have been aware that, in Australia, that desire is strongest among the self-managed funds, which are the largest players in the superannuation capital arena with a market share of over 31 per cent.

The third reason people give for acceptance is that Australian farmers would have gained access to the Archer Daniels Midland customer base. That sounds like a good idea but Australian grain is in big demand and GrainCorp should know who the large buyers are and also be able to contract with large trading houses like ADM without giving them ownership.

It’s true that shareholders would be much better off in the short term accepting the takeover offer. They have been badly treated. But when you own part of a nation’s vital infrastructure you cannot assume that you will be allowed to sell that infrastructure to people who are overseas rivals –particularly in an industry that we have earmarked for national growth.

The board of GrainCorp first needs to set up an infrastructure arm so it can raise capital at low cost. Then it needs to look at BHP Billiton and study how over time the 'Big Australian' has given a degree of stability to minerals even though it is a wildly fluctuating business. BHP invested in five major plays – iron ore, oil/gas, coal, aluminium/nickel and potash. It is now transferring its operating skills from one minerals industry to another but the five plays have fluctuations, which in most years offset each other and provide a degree of stability (in recent years they have all boomed but that is rare).

GrainCorp needs to think about how to implement a similar strategy over time. Prior to the ADM bid GrainCorp was buying international assets to lessen income variation, so was heading in that direction, but the strategy lacked clarity and required an associated infrastructure investment strategy.

The existing board and management need to undertake some deep soul searching as to whether they have the skills to implement a BHP style strategy. Alison Watkins clearly does not believe she has that ability and opens the position for a champion. If GrainCorp is to achieve the potential of the looming food boom, the board should choose a CEO who is willing to talk to self managed super investors about infrastructure investment.

Footnote: America is a major wheat growing rival. The fact that the Americans didn't like our rejection makes you think we got it right. 

More on the finished Armstrong Siddeley

The prize for the best photos goes to Sheena Prince. She even made us look good.

 At the Albany version of the Opera House

The Tusker team

It really does go.

More proof it is Albany.

The bad news was that two days after this public launch, the rear was stoved in -

But that did not deter an admiring crowd at the Albany show -

Edward John Eyre - the forgotten explorer

"Eyre - the forgotten explorer", by Ivan Rudolph, tells the great story of Edward John Eyre.
http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/johneyre.htm
Amazing that survived, with one reason being his cultivation and use of aboriginal contacts.
He was only 25 (born 1815) when he set out to cross the Nullabor in 1840, but by that time was already an experienced bush explorer. The Nullabor nearly brought him undone, but several bits of luck allowed him to survive, arriving in Albany on July 6th, 1841.

Steve Keen on the Nobel Prize for Economics

As well as an interesting perspective on Australian house prices, Steve Keen gives an opinion about the Nobel Prize for economics - i.e. it is really not a "science", in terms of providing clear answers. That does not mean that economics cannot contribute to all sorts of issues, just that it is a case of "buyer beware".

Economics’ odd couple highlights a Nobel folly

  By Steve Keen | October 21, 2013 | Debtwatch

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I would love to be in the audi­ence watch­ing the body lan­guage at this year’s “Nobel” cer­e­mony for eco­nom­ics. Robert Shiller, who is far too polite a per­son to make it obvi­ous, will nonethe­less at least fid­get as he lis­tens to Eugene Fama’s speech, since Fama con­tin­ues to dis­pute that bub­bles in asset prices can even be defined. Shiller, in con­trast, first came to pub­lic promi­nence with his warn­ings in the early 2000s that the stock and hous­ing mar­kets in the States were dis­play­ing signs of “irra­tional exuberance”.

Fama came to promi­nence within eco­nom­ics – though not in the wider body politic – in the 1970s with his PhD research that argued that asset mar­kets were “effi­cient” not just a first order (get­ting the actual val­ues right) but even to a sec­ond order (pick­ing the turn­ing points in val­u­a­tion as well).

How can two such dia­met­ri­cally opposed views receive the Nobel Prize in one year? The equiv­a­lent in physics would be to award the prize to one research team that proved that the Higgs Boson existed, and another that proved it didn’t.

- See more at: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2013/10/21/economics-odd-couple-highlights-a-nobel-folly/#sthash.90I73Ru0.dpuf

Steve Keen hasn't given up on Australian house prices - same for farming?

How to spot a housing bubble before it bursts

Steve Keen15 October, 2013.

After a bubble has burst, no one denies that it existed. But before it does, the popular refrain is that though bubbles existed elsewhere in the world, “there’s no bubble here”. So housing bubbles are admitted to have existed in Japan, the USA, Spain and Ireland – because they’ve already burst.

But the rest of the world – and especially Australia – is different. House prices in Australia, the UK, and everywhere in between where they are still rising, are justified by … (fill in your favourite fundamental reasons here) and are not in any way manifestations of bubbles.

Read the rest here - http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/10/15/economy/how-spot-housing-bubble-it-bursts

Part 2 - Housing hopes: Will the souffle rise twice?

My previous post on house price data from the BIS (How to spot a housing bubble before it bursts, October 15) scotched one part of the ‘No Bubble Downunder’ case: Australia is one of four countries where house prices are more than twice as high as they were in real terms in 1985 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Bubble Contenders

Part 3 - The housing bubble Whodunnit

  

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This arti­cle is the third in a series on Australia’s hous­ing mar­ket. Read the first arti­cle here and sec­ond arti­cle here.

In the last two arti­cles in this series, I argued that Australia’s house prices “walk like a duck” – using BIS data, Aus­tralia is one of only four coun­tries where prices are twice as high in real terms as they were in 1985. And they “quack like a duck” – accel­er­at­ing house­hold debt is a major dri­ver of ris­ing house prices, as in the other present and past house price bub­ble economies (the US, Spain, Japan, Nor­way, the UK and Den­mark). So hav­ing con­cluded they’re a duck, what species of duck are they?

At first glance, the Aus­tralian house price bub­ble does appear to be a dif­fer­ent species to its Euro­pean and Amer­i­can brethren. Tack­ing Nigel Stapleton’s data onto the ABS series, we can develop an index for Aus­tralia going back to 1880 – com­pared to 1890 for America’s Shiller Index and (wait for it) 1628 for the Heren­gracht Canal Index. With 350 years of data, there is clearly no trend to the Euro­pean series; and after the sub­prime crash, any argu­ment that there is a trend to US prices now looks pretty shabby – even though prices are clearly ris­ing once more in the Land of the Sur­veilled (see Fig­ure 1).

Fig­ure 1: Long term real house price indices

- See more at: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2013/11/04/the-housing-bubble-whodunnit/#sthash.KjNFvAmy.dpuf

The completed Whitley

The Whitley completed, together with the team of workers plus hanger-on.
It will be on display at the Albany show.