Lunch With George!

January 10, 2002 - Rubio's

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Agenda

Sapporo
Show & Tell
MacWorld Announcements
inMotion Revisited
Lord of the Rings
Meta Research Bulletin
Pei Wei
George Burgers

Sapporo

Teri and I made our first visit to Sapporo, a Japanese restaurant in Scottsdale. They have three distinct sections: A Sushi bar, a typical dining area serving Pacific Rim dishes, and Teppan Yaki. Naturally, we chose the Teppan Yaki!

Not a picture of Sapporo-- but it's close!
There are only eight Teppan Yaki tables, each with seating for around 10. Everyone sits facing the large griddle, which is where the chef cooks your meal. It was a great show, and terrific food.

My favorite part was when the chef took out an egg (it was intended for the fried rice) and started it spinning on the cooking surface. He then picked it up with a spatula and began tossing it in the air and catching it again. He finished this trick by letting the egg fall to the cooking surface, where he already had the spatula turned on its edge. The egg was split almost entirely in half, the contents spilled onto the griddle where they began to cook, and the shell remained straddling the spatula!

I strongly recommend going for Teppan Yaki at lunch time-- the prices are significantly lower (The filet mignon is $28 at dinner, but only $16 at lunch), and there is little or no wait for a table. At dinner time, walk-in guests can expect to wait three hours, and they recommend making reservations a week in advance.

Show & Tell

For Show & Tell this week, George brought a cute little plastic Polar Bear, about two inches long. Not only is he a happy Polar Bear, but he also has two Penguins dancing on his back as he walks! [Now that I think about it, they must be Puffins, since Penguins live exclusively at the South Pole and Polar Bears keep to the North.] I was surprised when George told me he got the bear inside a chocolate egg! Once you open the egg, you take out the parts for the toy and assemble them, sometimes creating a toy which is bigger than the egg! They come from Germany, and are quite popular collectibles in Europe. They're similar to Baseball cards in that you don't know what you'll get until you buy it and open it. They are no longer available in the U.S., but George sent me a link to their site: http://www.kinder-eggs.com.

The cute little guy reminded George that he has noticed a proliferation of Polar Bear photographs, and that they're particularly popular on greeting cards (I agreed, noting that my daughter Emily had given Teri a Christmas card bearing [sorry!] a photo of a Polar Bear.). Seems like a dangerous job, taking snapshots of Polar Bears!

MacWorld Announcements

At the MacWorld expo in San Fransisco on January 7th, Steve Jobs unveiled some cool new products! Foremost is the new iMac-- a complete computer in a half-sphere the size of half of a volleyball with an aticulated arm suspending a beautiful flat-panel display (I still have a good photo on the Main page). It's fast, quiet (no cooling fan), comes with a DVD/CD burner, and it's a Mac! Did I mention Teri has already ordered one?

Another new product is iPhoto, Apple's free download (OS X only!) for managing and manipulating your digital photographs. Naturally is has an intuitive interface and lots of cool features, but the best part (in my opinion) is that you can create photo albums containing photos, journaling text, cute little graphic "stickers", etc., and then upload it to Apple over the Internet. 3-4 weeks later, a hard-bound,professional-quality book containing your photo album arrives in the mail! You can also send your digital images to Kodak via the internet and receive prints in the mail. Check it out at Apple's iPhoto page.

InMotion Revisited

when George was getting ready to board his return flight from Florida, he rented another portable DVD player from InMotion (George originally reported on InMotion at the November 15th lunch) along with two DVDs. He also tried out his new Noise-canceling headphones (also discussed during the November 15th lunch), and found there was little difference between them and conventional headphones.

When George returned to Phoenix, he just dropped the DVD player and movies off at a Mail Boxes, Etc., where he noticed that they now charge the same rate from UPS shipping that UPS charges at their own counters. Cool!

Oh-- George also watched a couple of movies:

Chocolat

Chick flick. 'Nuff said.

The Mummy

George said he really liked this one-- it was a lot of fun! George is a fan of Brendan Fraser, so it's understandable. He also noted that Ebert & sidekick liked the Mummy but said the sequel had too much action.

Lord of the Rings

I finally got to see this movie. Wow! It was spectacular! It was almost three hours long, but I couldn't take my eyes off of the film. I have not read the book, but now I'm tempted to do so. The special effects were simply amazing. But not just the amazing places and the amazing creatures that don't realy exist but look real, but even the Hobbits themselves. Even though actors of average stature played Hobbits, they managed to make them all look quite diminutive! I'm glad I don't have to wait three years for the next one (George Lucas, are you listening???)!

Meta Research Bulletin

I just received the new MetaResearch Bulletin from Dr. Tom Van Flandern's Meta Research Foundation. I mentioned last month that the previous bulletin featured an article in which two nuclear engineers hypothesized that the great pyramid at Giza was actually built and used as a plutonium mill. This was difficult to take seriously, but evidently some readers of the bulletin took it seriously enough to submit rebuttals. I'll say this for Dr. Van Flandern: He is not only willing to allow some pretty strange ideas to be presented-- he also is willing to open the floor to all sides.

An article which I found quite interesting was written by Dr. Tom himself. He is challenging the currently-held beliefs regarding the origins of Pluto, its moon Charon, and Neptune's moons Triton and Nereid.

First, a few facts about which there is no debate:

Neptune has a large moon (Triton) whose orbital direction is opposite to Neptune's direction of rotation.
Triton's orbit is inclined 20 degrees relative to Neptune's equator.
Nereid's orbit is tilted 27 degrees, and its orbit is so elongaged it is close the the threshold of escape.
Pluto is close in size to Triton.
Pluto's orbit around the sun is tilted 17 degrees relative to the plane of the other planets' orbits.
Pluto's orbit is elongated enough that it crosses inside the orbit of Neptune.
Pluto's moon Charon is half the diameter of Pluto (the largest such ratio in the solar system).

Current mainstream theory explains these observations as the unrelated results of distinct events. Triton was originally in a solar orbit, but was captured during a close approach with Neptune. Charon's orbit around Pluto is proposed to be the result of a collision between the two bodies, which were originally in separate solar orbits.

Dr. Tom proposes that Neptune once had four large moons, all in coplanar orbits revolving in the direction of Neptune's rotation (much as Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus still do). He believes these moons were disrupted by a close approach event with another fairly massive object (somewhere between 2 and 5 Earth masses). He argues that this is a much more likely event and a much more explainable result, given that current theory requires two highly improbable events (the clsoe encounters resulting in satellite captures).

Dr. Tom even created a computer model while working at the US Naval Observatory. He and a colleague created initial conditions of a Neptune with four regular moons in typical orbits. They then allowed various-sized "Planet X" bodies to move near Neptune's orbit, and masses nearing 3 Earth masses typically resulted in the following:

Escaped moons, and
moons with reversed motion.

I find this to be a compelling argument! I plan to do some outer-solar system research of my own to see what I think.

Pei Wei

Over the holiday break, George and I want to a very nice, upscale, fast-food Chinese restaurant: Pei Wei Asian Cafe at 44th Street and Indian School. You order your food at the counter and pick it up when it's ready. The food is much better than any fast food, the decor is very attractive and the atmosphere is pleasant.

I discovered later that Pei Wei is owned and operated by P.F. Chang Chinese Bistro! That would explain the high quality. I hope they open another one closer to my home or workplace!

George Burgers

When Corey (a co-worker of mine) recently returned from a visit to San Diego, he reported seeing a hamburger place named "George Burgers"! He was not able to get a photograph, but will try to capture an image the next time he is there. George and I did several searches on the internet but only found a few text references on web sites listing restaurants in southern California. I did find an image of a lithograph by Eizin Suzuki entitled "George's Burgers No. 2" depicting just such a restaurant in Los Angeles (the lithograph is dated 1984).

Last modified 01/20/2002.

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