Monday, July 21, 2003 Food, Food, Food... Speaking of food: Former Chicago Bears football player William ' The Refrigerator' Perry (right) competes with competitors in the 88th annual Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York, July 4, 2003. Two-time hot dog eating contest winner Takero Kobayashi (second from left), from Japan, won the contest eating 44 hot dogs in 12 minutes. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton 5:57:25 PM    Comment on this post! [] Yes, it's old news, but I only recently came across this shot, and it reminded me of some other news, namely that Nathan's (presumably capitalizing on Japanese interest in their product brought about about by recent Japanese victories) has announced that they'll be opening a Nathan's in Japan in the near future. Whoo-hoo! Real kosher hot dogs! (Of course, if you know where to look, you can find imported Johnsonville brats from Wisconsin. I've even seen a Johnsonville hot dog stand parked in front of National Azabu. Yes, it's a bit obsessive to be going on about American junk food.) I know someone (a Brit, no less) who says that the Japanese contestants cheated, because they use the technique of first squishing the hot dog buns into very tiny bits and then ramming the sausages themselves down thier throats. Of course they didn't cheat, they merely applied sound and creative techniques to the problem at hand, while the Americans relied on simply bulling their way through. Sort of a metaphor for how Japan ate the US auto industry's lunch during the 1980s, if you like. I think I can pretty much guarantee that hordes of management consultants over the last couple of years have been incorporating the Japanese hot-dog-eating victories into their PowerPoint presentations to clients.   5:56:33 PM    Comment on this post! [] Fountain Pens, Again: Courtesy (again) of David Harris' Science & Literature blog, a link to a story about a fountain pen aficionado named Andreas Lambrou: He knows the flow must go on For a collector and businessman, nothing that modern technology offers these days can replace the magic of writing with a fountain pen. By John Balzar, Times Staff Writer Half a century is a long time to defy progress, to swim upstream, to celebrate what had been. In the beginning, Andreas Lambrou was just a schoolboy. In Nicosia, Cyprus, he started tagging along with his uncle who happened to sell everyday writing pens. There was something about these instruments and the way they felt in the hand. As Lambrou grew up and moved to Great Britain, he couldn't shake his fascination. He accepted, oh well, that he was a "weirdo." He collected pens, repaired pens, designed pens and made friends of like-minded inky antiquarians from around the world. Ultimately, he wrote the book on pens. Fountain pens, naturally. Now living mostly in the U.S., with his hair gray and the years lined on his enthusiastic face, Andreas Lambrou finds himself unexpectedly in the best of times: The past, at last, has caught up with the future. Lambrou is a weirdo no more. At 60, he is an industrial artist, a businessman, an authority--and, yes, still a good part schoolboy. From an apartment office in the Wilshire District, he commissions some of the most exquisite fountain pens ever made. Or, foun-TAINE pens, as he pronounces it with his lingering Greek accent The rest at http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-et-balzar16jul16221421,1,2390266.story?coll=la-headlines-technology   4:04:43 PM    Comment on this post! []