We’re still a couple of months away from the debut of the fourth installment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie francise, but Disney already has the script for a fifth adventure written.
Starting with the fourth movie and continuing with future ones in the francise, the stories will stand alone as singular adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow. The first three movies contained the same general characters and thematic elements.
Johnny Depp will likely continue on as Jack Sparrow. Thew new movies will hope to recapture the magic from the first (and arguably the second) movies in the series. The third suffered from lackluster critical reviews.
A man did March 25 after suffering a heart attack while performing CPR on his wife, who had just fallen unconscious without a pulse. The woman later died as well.
The incident occurred in Clallam County, Washington. Authorities have not released an official cause of death, but suspect the man suffered a heart attack while performing CPR on his wife. The Seattle Times identified the couple as Charles, 61, and Geraldine Lorme, 59.
Around 9:45 police received a call from a man saying his wife had collapsed and that he was beginning CPR. As the dispatcher stayed on the line, the phone went silent. Police burst into the house and found Charles slumped over his wife. Police suspect natural causes in both deaths.
Nathan Myhrvold is a genius— not many people would dispute that. Among his many achievements in life include:
He worked at Microsoft for 13 years, eventually serving as Chief Technology Officer and creating Microsoft Research. He has applied for more than 500 patents. In his spare time, he is a prize-winning nature photographer, enjoys paleontology, finished first and second at the World Barbecue Championship, studied classic French cooking in France and moonlighted at a Seattle restaurant during his time at Microsoft. Education-wise he had his PhD by age 23 and participated in a graduate program under the guidance of Stephen Harding.
Yeah, so he’s also ridiculously rich. For the last couple 0f years, he’s taken out space in a quiet Seattle suburb and run experiments on a number of different things (for one, he thinks he can stop hurricanes through a new device). Mainly, though he’s been focused on food. That’s led up to the publication of this 6 volume, 40 pound monster of a book called Modernist Cuisine. This picture doesn’t even do it justice:
Did I mention the price yet? $625 for the whole set, though likely on sale for less at Amazon. So here’s where my problems start with this book. Myhrvold fully admits that even a well-equipped casual chef could only replicate about 80 percent of his recipes. Who knows what well-equipped actually means (if it means sous vide machines and centrifuges, I’m not). That’s all fine. People release a whole bunch of stuff that most people cannot afford to do.
However, Myhrvold has been making the rounds on talk shows promoting the book, as if we can afford to buy it. Even after buying the book, in order to prepare the recipes, one would not to invest hundreds (if not thousands of additional dollars into a kitchen). Now, it may be revolutionary, but there is no NEED for these techniques. With so many people in the world going hungry, Myhrvold could not and has not answered why the world needs his technology. His response actually seems to be, “Because I’m a rich guy who can afford to play with big fancy gadgets.” I expect roughly .00001 percent of the world will ever have access to the technology to make these recipes.
Again, that last fact is not the problem. My anger arises from the fact he took to the Today Show and The Colbert Report (click here to see the clip) to sell the book. Very few people in those audiences will be able to afford or want to buy the book. So the point of doing those shows is to flaunt his work and wow people. What an egoist. Look at the clips below.
Hand it to Matt Lauer, he’s not buying any of it. He points out the practicality arguments against the book and seems unimpressed by the taste of the food. Colbert is a bit more enthusiastic about the whole thing, but still takes a few digs at Myhrvold.
Though his book may be every bit as revolutionary as everyone claims, Myhrvold has not convinced anyone in the general population that they should buy it. I actually think these televised appearances hurt his ability to sell it. He comes across as a rich, mad scientist.
Another chef seems to have forgotten the economics of restaurants. Ferran Adria is the head chef at El Bulli, voted the World’s Best Restaurant five times. It will close for good this July, not because it couldn’t afford to stay open, but because it will become a culinary institute in 2014. In an interview with Bloomberg he described his plans for that foundation:
“Who will come? It doesn’t matter. Everybody will want to come and every year we will have different guests. If we need feedback, we will get it. If we don’t, we don’t have to have it. Our priority is creativity. That is our challenge.”
Adria goes on to tell people his life has become wearisome because he constantly has to ask people to come to his restaurant. Oh woe is you. Most chefs would kill to be in your position and comments like the one above shows a complete disregard for the customers who actually pay (LOTS) of money to eat at your restaurant. This is a growing sentiment I’ve heard several times from master chefs. They forget that the customer is the one who ensures they can pursue that creativity by paying a premium to come to the restaurant. It may be “wearisome” but I’ve you didn’t care about customers, you picked the wrong industry to enter.
The rise of Twitter means we can share information with the world pretty much whenever we want. That’s led to some creative uses of the technology. Some of them have been life-saving. Some of them have been tragic.
1) Bank Robbery: Annemarie Dooling (who describes herself as a “Jet setting, Manhattan drinking, design obsessed sicko” who is also a web producer for an unnamed “popular talk show website”) was just at a bank some normal day when all of a sudden a robber came inside. Shortly after, she began tweeting about the robbery and about her missing trackball (which is why she can’t make calls). The tweets continued until after the police interviewed everyone and let them go. She praised the teller for their response during the crisis.
2) During Childbirth: You don’t really for that to be a private moment. Not if you’re the CEO of Twitter’s wife. Sara Williams, wife of Evan Williams, tweeted throughout the experience from the moment her water broke through the first diaper. The first tweet about the child birth read “Dear Twitter, My water broke. It wasn’t like Charlotte in Sex and the City. Now, timing contractions on an iPhone app.” Perhaps thankfully, no tweets came during the hardest part of the procedure.
3) A Miscarriage: It was just a normal day at the office for Penelope Trunk, chief executive at Brazen Careerist. Then, during a board meeting, she realized she was having a miscarriage. She cheerfully tweeted the news to her followers: The internet exploded in outrage. How could a woman share that type of personal information with the whole world? Trunk was unapologetic and explained she had already endured two abortions and a miscarriage. Having the miscarriage then saved her from having to go through with an already scheduled abortion.
4) Drowning of a Child: Shellie Ross sparked a nationwide outcry when she tweeted about her son’s drowning right after it happened. That afternoon, she tweeted about a rare batch of fog in her neighborhood. Just 15 minutes later, she called paramedics because her child had fallen into the pool. Then, she posted a tweet which read, “Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.” Five hours later (after her son passed away) she posted again “Remembering my million dollar baby” with an attached picture. Ross says she was outside when her son fell into the pool. Her profile is Military_Mom.
5) During a Heart Attack: Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher suffered a major heart attack in late 2010. Doctors said it would have been fatal if not spotted early on. Christopher was rushed to a hospital in the back of an ambulance tweeting the whole way. Here’s a sample:
Colleagues immediately rushed to his aid and offered words of support. Thankfully, Christopher’s condition stabilized. He now has returned to work for Mediaite.
Middlebury College posted an update from Tom Root, the father of missing Middlebury student Tik Root, this morning. Though he remains in the custody of Syrian authorities, Root has been located and is “safe and well.” Currently, the Syrian authorities are responsible for his well-being. In the update, Tom Root thanked Senator Patrick Leahy and Ambassador Imad Moustapha for their work on the case.
Professors Tom Root and Andi Lloyd participated in a wave of press interviews yesterday to spread the word about Tik’s plight. Those included interviews with WCAX-TV (Burlington), WBUR in Boston, and an interview with “CNN In The Arena” with Eliot Spitzer.
We continue to hope for a peaceful and happy ending to this situation shortly.
Did I mention the price yet? $625 for the whole set, though likely on sale for less at Amazon. So here’s where my problems start with this book. Myhrvold fully admits that even a well-equipped casual chef could only replicate about 80 percent of his recipes. Who knows what well-equipped actually means (if it means sous vide machines and centrifuges, I’m not). That’s all fine. People release a whole bunch of stuff that most people cannot afford to do.
Not Intent on Arriving 