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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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Nathan Myhrvold
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: January 1
Author
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Entrepreneur
Inventor
Mathematician
Paleontologist
Photographer
Seattle
Washington
Nathan Paul Myhrvold
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Elections, for their part, are typically popularity contests rather than measures of candidates' relative competency or effectiveness. Imagine if scientific truth were determined according to which scientist was most popular. To be successful, scientists would have to be charismatic and attractive - and human knowledge would suffer terribly.
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The reason societies with democratic governments are better places to live in than their alternatives isn't because of some goodness intrinsic to democracy, but because its hopeless inefficiency helps blunt the basic potential for evil.
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A blowtorch is a wonderful thing. You can get one of those for about 25 bucks at Home Depot. And there's a ton of things that you can use a blowtorch for, in browning a steak or touching up the browning of a chicken or making creme brulee.
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Software is a gas ! It expands to fit the container it is in !
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Raw lobster tail, freeze dried, is amazing.
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The ever-growing size of software applications is what makes Moore's Law possible: 'If we hadn't brought your computer to its knees, why would you go out and buy a new one?'
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Most decisions are seat-of-the-pants judgments. You can create a rationale for anything. In the end, most decisions are based on intuition and faith.
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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!
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When I was about nine years old, I announced to my mother that I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I went to the library and got this whole pile of books. I'd love to say it all turned out great. It didn't. But, sort of, from that point on, whenever there was serious cooking at home, I was the one who did it.
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Intellectual Ventures is a company that invests in invention.
Nathan Myhrvold
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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.
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It is better to predict dramatic things that don't happen than boring things that do.
Nathan Myhrvold
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Chefs think about what it's like to make food. Being a scientist in the kitchen is about asking why something works, and how it works.
Nathan Myhrvold
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The first thing that is not obvious to people is global warming is a less-than-1% effect. It's like being shortchanged at the bank by a penny every dollar. Over a long period of time with lots of transactions, that piles up.
Nathan Myhrvold
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One of the things that I love to do is travel around the world and look at archaeological sites. Because archaeology gives us an opportunity to study past civilizations, and see where they succeeded and where they failed. Use science to, you know, work backwards and say, 'Well, really, what were they thinking?'
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I've never filed a patent lawsuit. I hope never to file a patent lawsuit. That may be unrealistic, but it would be great if I could avoid doing it... Lawsuits are a ridiculous way to do business.
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Economists want their discipline to be a science, and they have nailed down a few precepts, but many of their debates are still clouded by ideology.
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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.
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Why pay a fee for Internet content when a million free sites are just a click away? There's no incentive until people are too addicted to the Net to turn off their computers, yet are bored with what's available.
Nathan Myhrvold
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My career at Microsoft really was getting in the way of my cooking.
Nathan Myhrvold