- It is awesome to have the season underway again – the
Japanese sushi market auction season, of course. What better way could there be
to start the season than having a bluefin tuna sell for a record $1.76 million at a
Tokyo auction, nearly tripling the previous high set last year? Yes, environmentalists
are sounding the alarm because they believe that stocks of the majestic, speedy
fish are being depleted worldwide because of a high demand for sushi, but do
you want to eat delicious raw fish or worry about how many of them are left? So
savor the scene at Tokyo's massive Tsukiji fish market where the 489-pound
tuna
caught off northeastern Japan sold for 155.4 million yen. Because of its tender
pink and red meat, the bluefin tuna is prized for sushi and sashimi. It is such
a delicacy that the best slices of fatty bluefin can sell for 2,000 yen ($24)
per piece at trendy Tokyo sushi bars. Even with hipsters in New York and Los
Angeles chowing down on sushi at an ever-increasing rate, Japaense still eat 80
percent of the bluefin tuna caught worldwide. The winning bidder for the
489-pound bluefin was Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co., which operates
the Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain. He planned to serve the fish in his eateries
on Saturday. Kimura was already the record holder for most expensive sushi
purchase ever, as he also set the old record of 56.4 million yen at last year's
New Year's auction. This year’s winning bid works out to 700,000 yen per
kilogram, or $3,603 per pound. Those numbers likely won't do anything to calm
the fears of groups such as the Washington-based Pew Environmental Group, which
plans to release a report Monday showing that stocks of all three bluefin
species —the Pacific, Southern and Atlantic — are in a freefall due to overfishing.
To combat that, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic
Tunas voted in November to maintain strict catch limits on the species. It’s
amazing how these organizations lack appreciation for the almighty dollar and
the power of the free-market economy……….
- Hooray for NASA. Its Curiosity rover may or may not have found a flower embedded in a Martian
rock. Why should any Earth-bound creatures care? That’s not clear, but the find
(or non-find) has sparked a buzz of discussion over the odd formation,
discovered along with a snake-like rock formation winding across the Red
Planet's surface. The Mars "flower" photo was taken on Dec. 19 by the
microscope-like Mars Hand Lends Imager at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm
and in the lower left corner of the picture is an apparently transparent
formation that some space enthusiasts have suggested looks like a flower. NASA
fed this galactic goofiness by posting a raw, unprocessed version of the photo
online on the Curiosity rover’s mission website overseen by the agency's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The rover has previously offered
false hope by spotting small bits of clear plastic (pieces of the rover itself)
on the surface of Mars before, but NASA believes that is not the case this
time. JPL spokesman Guy Webster said the object "appears to be part of the
rock, not debris from the spacecraft." On Friday, NASA also posted a new
panorama of Curiosity’s current location on Mars, a shallow depression called
YellowknifeBayinside the vast Gale Crater. The panorama is a mosaic of photos
centered around a snake-like rock winding across its middle. The ever-creative
science dorks at NASA have dubbed the rock "Snake River." The rock is
dark and curvy, rising high above the flatter rocks of its surroundings.
"It's one piece of the puzzle," said rover mission project scientist
John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “It has
a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock and appears to have formed
after the deposition of the layer that it transects." Hopefully these
finds make NASA feel better about the $2.5 billion cost of the Curiosity rover,
which landed on Aug. 5 to begin a two-year primary mission of determining whether
the planet could have once been habitable for primitive life………
- Some people simply do not appreciate a business going
the extra mile…by not doing its due diligence before selling a product. The
Willett family of Tucson, Ariz. embodies this disheartening trend as it spits
on what could have been the most memorable Christmas gift their children had
ever received. As the holidays rolled around, Cameron Willett and his wife
wanted to do something special for their children and like many families, they
had to accomplish this on a tight budget that left no room for extravagant
gifts. To make this formula work, the Willett’s went to the GameStop at
Foothills Mall to buy a refurbished Game Boy. Refurbished items are becoming
increasingly popular due to their cheaper cost, coupled with short-term
warranties, and a good “refurb” can be nearly as good as a new item in some
cases. For Cameron Willet, a refurbished Game Boy wasn’t as good as new…it was
better. This upgraded gaming system came stocked with sexually explicit images
that he and his family could have enjoyed together. Instead, he was outraged
and after finding the images as he attempted to set up parental controls on the
device, Willett took the device back to the store and demanded an explanation. "Multiple
pictures, multiple positions, just not a good Christmas present," he
said. "It was definitely a shock. I was a lot let down. We did what we
could and scrounged up money to make Christmas happen and this is what we
got." GameStop managers apologized for the mistake and replaced the, um,
enhanced Game Boy with a brand-new one. In the end, Willett and his children
ended up coming out ahead on the exchange. In response to the incident, GameStop
released a statement saying it is “currently
researching this transaction and our top priority is to try and make this right
for our customer.” The statement also explained that the company’s policy is to
wipe out all existing content is removed from all devices before they are
re-sold, which clearly did not happen in this case. A similar incident occurred
last week at a GameStop in Denver, so a company-wide reinforcement of the
policy’s importance would seem to be in order. "It only takes one
picture to ruin Christmas," Cameron Willett added. Or one picture to make
it the most memorable Christmas ever………
- What the hell is wrong with Al Pacino? Well, besides a
string of increasingly unwatchable movies in which he gradually devolves into
unimaginative variations of the same character, one whose schtick revolves
around him shouting incredulously every time something happens that he doesn’t
like? Pacino had a chance to do what actors should relish, namely meet and
spend time with the person he would be portraying in an upcoming role, and he
turned it down. Granted, that person was famed record producer and convicted
killer Phil Spector, but face time with a source of inspiration is still face
time. Pacino had a chance to meet Spector before portraying him in an HBO movie
but says he turned it down. Afterward, he found out that he had in fact met
Spector 20 years ago, as evidenced by a photo a friend showed him. In the 20-year-old
photo, the actor was standing next to Spector even though Pacino said he has no
memory of the moment. There is at least a 25 percent chance that one or both
men were coked up at the time, so that’s not a surprise. As for the movie, the
unimaginatively-named "Phil Spector," it will debut in March and
focuses on the client-attorney relationship between Spector and Linda Kenney
Baden, who represented him in his first trial after he was charged with the
murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Spector temporarily ducked justice when the
first trial ended in a mistrial, but he was convicted in a second trial and is
now serving 19 years to life in prison. In playing the role, Pacino wore large
number of wigs in portraying the eccentric Spector, best known for his "Wall
of Sound" style that helped form and develop pop music in the early 1960s.
Pacino explained that he elected not to meet Spector in prison because he'd be
a different man than the one he was playing and instead chose too watch video
clips of Spector to help him nail down the character. "I didn't know
anything about him, except that he was responsible for a lot of great music and
this strange case," Pacino said. Helen Mirren stars alongside Pacino as
Baden in the film………
- Does Lance Armstrong’s desire to compete again outweigh
his desire to continue lying to himself and the world about his (alleged) use
of performance-enhancing drugs? After years of misleading the world and
following a year in which he was stripped
of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from competing in sporting events
governed by the World Anti-Doping Agency code, Armstrong is reportedly weighing
the merits of coming clean. Sources have suggested that Armstrong has informed associates
he is considering admitting to the use of performance-enhancing drugs because
he believes such a confession would help restore his athletic career in
triathlons and running events at age 41. He obviously isn't going to return to
cycling, but still competes in triathlons and the occasional endurance running
event. His attorney, Tim Herman, claimed that his client has not reached out to
U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart and David Howman,
director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency and said he had no knowledge
of Armstrong considering a confession. Howman similarly said he had not heard
from Armstrong or anyone associated with him in regards to a possible
confession but said USADA, not WADA, would have the authority to decide whether
to reopen the case if Armstrong were to present new information. "It's
[USADA's] issue, although they could come to us to ask for guidance or
advice," he said. There is precedent for cases to be reopened and the WADA code provides for reduced
penalties in instances in which athletes provide "substantial
assistance" in resolving other doping cases. Along with Armstrong, trainer
Michele Ferrari and former U.S. Postal Service cycling team physician Luis
Garcia del Moral did not contest USADA's cases against them and also received
lifetime bans, but Howman did not comment on how a confession could affect
them. Even if he does admit his wrongdoing, he still could face a battle with
the U.S. Department of Justice, which is considering whether to join a federal
whistle-blower lawsuit filed by former Armstrong teammate Floyd Landis……….
No comments:
Post a Comment