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I was good at math and science, and I got lots of degrees in lots of things, but in a parallel universe, I probably became a chef.

Nathan Myhrvold

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Nathan Myhrvold
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: January 1
Author
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Entrepreneur
Inventor
Mathematician
Paleontologist
Photographer
Seattle
Washington
Nathan Paul Myhrvold
Lots
Degrees
Became
Probably
Universe
Parallel
Science
Parallels
Good
Chef
Things
Math

More quotes by Nathan Myhrvold

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I have a very pragmatic approach to diets. Ones you can't stick to don't do you any good. Some people say, 'Just eat half of what's on your plate,' but I can't do that!
Nathan Myhrvold
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If people don't find what you are doing threatening, then it is probably not very important.
Nathan Myhrvold
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I wanted to figure out how long to cook things. I did some experiments and then wrote a program using Mathematica to model how heat is transferred through food.
Nathan Myhrvold
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The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.
Nathan Myhrvold
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By burning nuclear waste as fuel, we believe we can power the United States cleanly for hundreds of years without ever touching new resources.
Nathan Myhrvold
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In market research I did at Microsoft Corp. in the early 1990s, I estimated that the 'Wall Street Journal' took in about 75 cents per copy from subscribers, $1.25 at the newsstand and a whopping $5 per copy from ads. The ad revenue let them run a far bigger newsroom than subscribers were paying for.
Nathan Myhrvold
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Wine lovers have known for centuries that decanting wine before serving it often improves its flavor. Whatever the dominant process, the traditional decanter is a rather pathetic tool to accomplish it. A few years ago, I found I could get much better results by using an ordinary kitchen blender.
Nathan Myhrvold
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If you talk about sous-vide, then you have to talk about food safety, and microbiology, and heat.
Nathan Myhrvold
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The best value for money in cooking equipment, in my mind, is first a digital scale and digital thermometer. They're both about $20. They help you cook so much more accurately that they're both enormously valuable.
Nathan Myhrvold
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Movies such as 'Citizen Kane' and 'The Front Page' portrayed an era when driven newspapermen would do anything to get a story. The U.K.'s rough-and-tumble Fleet Street remains something of a throwback to that era, as demonstrated by the recent phone-hacking scandal - which led to the demise of yet another century-old paper, the 'News of the World.'
Nathan Myhrvold
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If you have two steaks, one that's an inch thick, one that's 2 inches thick, how much longer does the thicker one need to cook? It's four times as long. It goes roughly like the square. How come cookbooks don't tell you that?
Nathan Myhrvold
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Risk is the sort of word that is easy to discuss upfront but tough to handle when it comes time to pay the piper. There will always be some who wimp out and second-guess when the pain hits, but that is a childish reaction.
Nathan Myhrvold
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Suppose that 'Unsolved Mysteries' called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people - like the lost identical twin, only younger than you.
Nathan Myhrvold
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People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale. Fortunately, political and religious leaders stopped barbecuing astronomers for saying so, turning their spits with human-rights activists instead.
Nathan Myhrvold
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Most visions of extraterrestrial life are actually steeped in human hubris. The fictional extraterrestrials of 'Star Trek' or a hundred other space operas are less alien than many of my neighbors. And funny, the ones running the place are mostly WASPish men.
Nathan Myhrvold
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Cooking is an art, but all art requires knowing something about the techniques and materials. Using modernist techniques, you get more control, and that allows you to be more artistic, not less!
Nathan Myhrvold
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If you have a block of ballistics gelatin and a high-speed camera, pretty soon somebody gets a gun!
Nathan Myhrvold
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Raw lobster tail, freeze dried, is amazing.
Nathan Myhrvold
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Among modern occupations, only cult leaders and TV weathermen rival the technological visionary's ability to retain credibility despite all evidence to the contrary.
Nathan Myhrvold
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The techniques of being an Internet visionary are just like those of lower-tech fortunetellers through the ages. A technological visionary must tell people what they want to hear, because your company's stock won't rise if you spout an unpopular vision to analysts.
Nathan Myhrvold