One of my very favorite restaurants has long been Noma.  The  New York Times  today reported: Though Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant often called the best in the world, will close for regular service, its influence will  live on through its imitators , the Times restaurant critic Pete Wells writes. Noma's innovations included its methods of foraging and fermentation, its rustic hand-thrown pottery and its list of odd-smelling natural wines.  "I don't think any restaurant came up with so many ideas that were shoplifted by so many other places in so many other cities so quickly," he writes. Still, a long-awaited lunch at Noma convinced Peter that the copycats could never capture the original:  "The restaurant that had inspired so many imitators was fluid, it was graceful, it was coherent." It thus seemed only too appropriate to focus my Tuesday nostalgia on that restaurant.  There is something about the intense pressure of being the best restaurant in the worl

Well, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did land on Taiwan.  This royally upsets the Chinese.  But, after Ukraine, the U.S. has to take a stand in Asia.  If you can recall back that far, Speaker Newt Gingrich visited in 1997.   China  called it a mistake and not much more.   Newt  himself today responded that China threats over Pelosi's Taiwan visit a "bluff."  Remember the Axis during WWII?  A weird trio looming might well be China, Russia and Iran. Justice was delivered by a drone strike in Kabul, although it took more than 20 years.  The victim was 71-year old al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri, #2 to Osama bin Laden, until he was earlier assassinated by Navy Seals in 2011.  Apparently, Zawahiri's family was seen escaping from the building.  He was an Egyptian physician who joined his first jihadist cell as a teenager.  They assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.  Next in line is perhaps  Saif al-Adel , but he is based in Iran, and has credibility problems. United Nations Se