WAGYU, CHUTORO AND DS60

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil   India   South Africa

June      1      638    3189           480      223         40

              2      730    3053           732      200         22
              3    1134    4669         1232      221         50
             4     1083    4928         1269      259         37
             5     1031    5511         1492      275         56
             6       975    4906         1008      286         60
             7       706    4253           910      297         44
             8       586    3157           813      266         82
             9     1093    4732         1185      246         82
           10       982    5163         1300      388         48
           11       904    4951         1261      394         74
           12       791    4603           843      389         70
           13       702    4229           890      309         69
           14       331    3263           598      321         57
           15       425    3415           729      395         88
           16       849    6592         1338        ?           57
           17       809    5264         1209      341         49
           18       747    5123         1204      342         63
           19       719    5066         1221      366         94
           20       573    4428           968      307         46
           21       267    3338           601      426         53
           22       363    3880           748      312         61
           23       863    5465         1364      468        111
           24       808    6071         1103      424        103
           25       649    5179         1180      401          87
           26       663    4893         1055      381         48
           27       512    4547           994      414         73
           28       285    3463           555      384         43
           29       346    3415           727      417         73
           30       764    5072         1271      506       128
July       1       676    4857        1057      438         92
             2       687    5155         1277      377         95
             3       616    5170         1264      444       108
             4       254    4494         1111       610         74
             5       251    3572          535       421       173

Summary:  

• Maybe things are getting better, although the USA is back to world leadership in new cases with 44,530, Brazil falling back to #2 with 26,209 and India with 23,932 at #3.  
• China, incidentally, had 8 new cases and no deaths yesterday.  They are now #22 in total deaths with 4634.  The USA has 132,569 deaths, easily #1, more than double that of Brazil with 64,900.
• South Korea is #63 with 283 deaths and none yesterday.

About that title above, I wanted to celebrate, so went to my Japanese wagyu beef from Miyazaki and chutoro (fatty blue-fin tuna) dinner.  Why?  

• About ten days ago I found a strange-looking $300+ charge on my VISA card and called them.  They said they'd look into it and take that item off.  
• A couple of days later I went to a store, picked up something and tried to pay with this VISA card.  Wouldn't work.  So I called and VISA said, oh, they cancelled the card and a new one should arrive in a day or two.  
• So what do I do about Netflix and my iPhone?  I could have called them and used another charge card.  
• However, I waited, and it took another week to arrive.
• I ordered a couple of mosquito traps on Amazon (they cost $50 each, and why I bought them will be explained in a later post), thus changing my VISA number, so Amazon Prime should be okay to watch.

That was why I splurged:

I also had a bottle of Stanford TR Elliott Pinot Noir.  What a meal!

Now, the matter of DS60.  Remember Kiefer Sutherland in Designated Survivor?  There were three seasons and you can see them on Netflix.  Rotten Tomatoes gave the series a 71%/53% rating.  The fourth season was cancelled.  South Korea came on the scene with something better.

If you read this blog you know that for the past decade I have placed South Korea as the top country for producing films.  Over the past third of a century I have been there at least 25 times, and early on was impressed how the leadership developed steeples of excellence.  They make the best home appliances and do well in electronics.  They are persevering in science, and their quick overcoming of COVID-19 is no accident.  There is something about government-industry partnerships that, with now and then scandals, work.

Education is of the highest priority.  In America, parents tend to complain that their children have too much homework.  In South Korea, they ask for more.  That one key exam to get into a university is so important that many mothers go to church and pray for two hours every week day.  They know this is not to seek spiritual help, but to impress upon their child that they care.  The government shuts down traffic on that day so students can safely get to the test sites on time.

I have given a couple of talks to various organizations there, including the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the leading federal educational/research center whose aim is to produce Nobel laureates.  The founder, Kee Hyong Kim, I consider to be a close friend.  At a young age he was pulled back to Seoul from Penn State, and became Science Minister.  Doesn't hurt that his family has links to Lotte and other companies.

One priority area for dominance was also entertainment.  Their K-Pop groups are now world class, and  Parasite this year won the Oscar for Best Film.

Well, boil all the above into a new Netflix series, entitled Designated Survivor 60 Days, and you have something worth watching.  Rotten Tomatoes audiences gave a 96% rating.  No reviewers' score yet because it is too new.

The producers copied the American Designated Survivor, with clear counterparts.  The Kiefer Sutherland is the Minister of the Environment, who by accident ends up being the only survivor to become Acting President for 60 days, until an election chooses the real one.  This individual is a chemistry professor at KAIST who has no political experience.  He grows in the job.  Let me stop here and just urge you to watch this series.

I'm into the Year 1944:

• Casablanca wins Oscar for Best Film.
• Mount Vesuvius erupts in Italy.
• There was a Great Escape, from Stalag Luft III.  Three return to the UK, but 50 are captured and executed.
• German Navy's Enigma message is decoded.

• June 6:  D-Day involving 155,000 troops landing on the beaches of Normandy.
• June 13:  Germany launches first V-1 flying bomb attack on London.
• June 20:  Adolf Hitler survives assassination plot in Operation Valkyrie.

• July 26:  Germany Messerschmitt Me 262 becomes the first jet fighter aircraft in combat.
• August 21:  Dumbarton Oaks Conference lays plan for the United Nations.
• September 8:  First V-2 attack on London.

• Ozzie and Harriet radio show debuts.
• German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, one of the conspirators against Hitler, chooses suicide.
• October 21:  American troops capture Aachen, first German city to fall.

• October 23-26:  Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, largest naval battle in history, involving Japanese kamikaze attacks and a decisive Allied victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy.  Battleship Musashi is sunk.
• FDR wins re-election.

• USS Archerfish sinks Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano, the largest ship to ever be sunk by a submarine.

• December 15:  Major Glenn Miller disappears over the English Channel.
• George C. Marshall becomes the first U.S. Five-Star General.  He won the Nobel Prize in 1953 for this Marshall Plan.
• Douglas MacArthur becomes the second 5-star general, followed by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Hit songs from 1944 in 18 minutes.  Bing Crosby's Swinging on a Star is #1 for the year.

Fireworks shows were spectacular this weekend.  But fireworks are dangerous with huge environmental implications.  China dominates today in volume, for, after all, they invented all this to scare away evil spirits.

But here is one from Mount Fuji:

American fireworks shows are massive.  Japan's have an aesthetic quality.  But here is how the USA can someday prevail, for the future of light shows will change.  The most innovative exhibition on July 4th, from Nashville.  Click on that, you will be impressed.

Drones--recyclable, clean, futuristic--will soon replace fireworks.

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