Trivia You'll Try Hard to Forget

Quote: odiousgambit

Sometimes when you eat scallops, they are fake scallops,

About one third of all fish served in restaurants is misdescribed. Fancy restaurant? So what? Expensive restaurant? So what? Most grill marks are added for appearance, it was not prepared on a grill.

Quote: Fleastiff

About one third of all fish served in restaurants is misdescribed. Fancy restaurant?

That's the truth. Every time I order Chilean Sea Bass they bring me Patagonian Toothfish.

Quote: Fleastiff

About one third of all fish served in restaurants is misdescribed.

One survey says 50% in California.

In 1977 an American fish merchant named Lee Lantz was scouring fishing boats in a Chilean port. Lantz’s business was finding new types of fish to bring to market, and he became excited when he spotted a menacing looking, five-foot long Patagonian toothfish . Taking it for a type of bass, Lantz believed it would do well in America. But when he tried a bite of the toothfish, fried up in oil, it disappointed. It had almost no flavor.

Nevertheless, Lantz still thought its attributes were a perfect match for the American market. It had a texture similar to Atlantic cod's, the richness of tuna, the innocuous mild flavor of a flounder, and its fat content made it feel almost buttery in the mouth. Mr. Lantz believed a white-fleshed fish that almost melted in your mouth -- and a fish that did not taste "fishy" -- could go a very long way with his customers at home.

It needed a good name. Lantz stuck with calling it a bass, since that would be familiar to Americans. He rejected two of his early ideas for names, Pacific sea bass and South American sea bass, as too generic. He decided on Chilean sea bass, the specificity of which seemed more exclusive.

Finally, in 1980, a company struggling with the rising cost of halibut that the company used in its fish sticks bought Lantz’s entire stock, banking on people not tasting the difference between halibut and toothfish beneath the deep fry. From there, Chilean sea bass quickly worked its way up the food chain. Chinese restaurants purchased it as a cheap replacement for black cod (Chilean sea bass is, after all, a type of cod). Celebrity chefs embraced it, enjoying, it ability to “hold up to any method of cooking, accept any spice,” and never overcook. The Four Seasons first served it in 1990; it was Bon Appetit’s dish of the year in 2001.

Quote: TheCesspit

Not surprising... if your good and have a long career, you might well set records for losses. I believe Brett Favre has the record for most interceptions thrown and games lost.

Favre had a chronic interception problem, regardless of the length of his career. I'm not so sure about losses.

Bare numbers aren't all that useful. A better measure is the winning percentage, though even that can be deceiving. Take Troy Aikman, inarguably one of the best QBs in recent times. In his first season with the Cowboys, the team ended up 1-15, and Aikman did not play in the sole victory.

every time I see a reference to the CAC index, the CAC 40, I think: "the caca"

a word for excrement not used by me, ever, but definitely some kids used this growing up, usually when very young. Always seemed odd to me.

today I wondered where it came from, so here is some trivia you can try to forget!

Quote: link

a nursery word but a very ancient one ...[similarity found in] many Indo-European languages... The word in this form appears in English slang c. 1870, and could have been taken from any or several of the languages that used it

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=caca