World's Most Expensive Tuna

A 511-pound tuna was sold for a record-breaking $175,000 in Tsukiji, the world biggest fish market in Tokyo! Can you believe that? The news (link) reports as follows.

Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market is known worldwide as the top place to buy fish. It is the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market on the planet!
Over 400 different types of seafood are sold there, with an average yearly value of sales at $5.5 billion.
It came as no surprise that a 511-pound tuna finally broke the sale record, at $175,000! Almost four times the weight of an average Japanese man, the tuna was caught off the northern tip of the main island Honshu, where many prize fish are found.
It was bought jointly by two Tokyo restaurants and an entrepreneur from Hong Kong, to be divided up after the sale. It is the biggest sale since the previous 2001 record, when a 440-pound tuna sold for $220,000.

Great statistician passed away

I heard a sad news: Eminent statistician David Blackwell has died at 91

Professor Blackwell, though a mathematician or statistician, is quite famous to us economists for his significant contribution in mathematical statistics and dynamic programming.
Here is a link to the wikipedia article about him.

He has written many influential papers such as:

• "Conditional Expectation and Unbiased Sequential Estimation," Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Mar., 1947), pp. 105-110
• "Equivalent Comparisons of Experiments," Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1953), pp. 265-272  
• "Discounted Dynamic Programming," Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Feb., 1965), pp. 226-235

Interestingly, despite his deep thoughts and ingenious works on each research topic, he described himself as follows:

I've worked in so many areas—I'm sort of a dilettante. Basically, I'm not interested in doing research and I never have been.

May he rest in peace.

JEP for FREE

Here comes a great news!

Online issues of the Journal of Economic Perspectives published since 1999 are now publicly accessible at no charge, compliments of the American Economic Association.

You can access to the Journal of Economic Perspectives from here. The symposium in the latest volume (Spring 2010), Con out of Economics, contains interesting debate among leading econometricians that may attract much attention.