In the  Vancouver Sun  yesterday was a  review of the restaurant we went to two days ago, Din Tai Fung .  A few surprises. It just opened last week. Is Canada's first Din Tai Fung. Can serve 312 customers at once. Raved about their Xiao Long Bao, or Shanghai soup dumplings. DTF XLBs feature Kurobuta pork, and each dumpling is 21 ounces with 18 folds.  Ten for 19.50 Canadian dollars, or divided by 1.39 to $14 U.S. dollars, or $1.40 each. Remember how Japanese wagyu beef was made famous by Kobe? Kurobuta  pork is a Japanese breed developed in Kagoshima of a Berkshire pig from the UK First given as a gift in the 1800s to the Emperor of Japan. There is a history, for in the 1640s, Oliver Cromwell's English soldiers were wintering the Shire of Berk and loved the taste of this unique black pig with white spots on tis legs, ears and snout. However, it was in 1930 that two of these pigs were brought to Kagoshima, and apparently all the "legal" Kurobuta ( meaning bl...

First, though...o n the front page of the   Sunday Star Advertiser   was a rather startling reality regarding the decline of vaccine effectiveness after six months: Johnson&Johnson:  86%, down to 13% Pfizer:  87%...43% Moderna:  89%..58% I receive my Moderna booster in two days.  Apparently, one can take any of the other two to boost your original sequence.  Based on the above, I'll stick with Moderna.  The Feds are rather tardy in making this official for everyone. My original plan was to feature some facet of TED every Friday.  However, this morning I saw a few  Quora  queries that begged to be added today: Becky Blanton 4y Why is attending a TED conference so expensive? Is there anyway I can attend the TED conferences without spending huge sums of money? I attended and spoke at TED Global in 2009. There was no way I could have afforded the $10,000 cost of attending, air flight, hotel etc. without having someone else pay for i...

The  New York Times  this morning well described what is happening with the COVID-19 pandemic and how people will probably adjust their lives into the future.  First, there seems to be a reversal of new cases from the south  (Florida, Texas ) to the north and mountain west.  Why?  Those states are getting colder and their populace is more and more staying indoors. About how you and I will react to this pandemic, the  NYT  talked with someone named Dr. Robert Wachter, who is the chair of the medicine department at the University of California in San Francisco.  He thinks we all should return to a new normal, now.  He is vaccinated and boosted, but still wears a mask in supermarkets and planes.  For people like him, and me, this could well be how we will so live for the rest of our lives.   This virus will NEVER go away.   The combination of vaccinations and the Pfizer pill to reduce hospitalization and death will ...