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" Cooking is for chefs. Science informs us and lets us cook while knowing what we are doing, but it is not a replacement for the skills of a chef. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Science
Doing
Skills
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" When we first did 'Modernist Cuisine,' I think most people in cookbook publishing would have said, 'This is insane.' "
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" The whole hardware industry has experienced the phenomenon in which every time computers get cheaper, they appeal to a new set of users; every time they get more powerful, old customers upgrade. "
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Time
Old
" Being a visionary is a new profession, but it is really just a variant on fortunetelling, which may be the world's oldest. And its marketing appeal is similar - people will pay for reassurance about the unknown. "
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New
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" Our reactor actually burns nuclear waste as fuel. So not only is it safe and powerful, it solves an important issue: It actually reduces nuclear waste instead of creating. It's the reactor of your dreams. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Your Dreams
Powerful
Important
" Records were replaced by CDs, and lead type died in favor of computerized fonts. However, each had a 100-year ride of popularity, so you can't feel too bad for them. "
Nathan Myhrvold
You
Ride
Popularity
" Many of the things the slow food people honor were innovations within historical times. Somebody had to be the first European to eat a tomato. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Honor
Slow
People
" Regardless of how it's done, transaction costs will continue to plummet as computers get more powerful. Low transaction costs are a wonderful thing if you're in the transaction business. They're wonderful for consumers too, making it cheaper and easier to buy things and creating new things to buy. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Powerful
Business
New
" 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
Heat
Cook
Food
" Mankind is not special by virtue of our address in the universe, or what spins around us, or because life originated here. Slowly, but surely, we've been compelled to renounce the comfort of these beliefs. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Life
Universe
Virtue
" 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
Place
Funny
Men
" One of the problems with posing a 'bold new plan' is that you can't just extrapolate from previous plans. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Bold
Plan
Plans
" 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
Time
Earth
People
" Within NASA, the shuttle is perhaps the least-groundbreaking project. Recall that Apollo was about creating brand-new technologies that did something unprecedented - putting men on the moon. The shuttle is, by comparison, a relic designed to make going into orbit routine. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Moon
Routine
Creating
" We collectively have a special place in our heart for the manned space flight program - Apollo nostalgia is one element, but that is only part of it. American culture worships explorers - look at the fame of Lewis and Clark, for example. The American people want to think of themselves as supporting exploration. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Space
Culture
Heart
" 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. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Way
Never
Business
" Efficiency in government is a more elusive concept than efficiency in the private economy, which may be measured relatively easily as output per units of input. What is the government's 'output?' "
Nathan Myhrvold
More
Efficiency
Economy
" Another random thing I do is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. And you may be familiar with the movie 'Contact,' which sort of popularized that. It turns out there are real people who go out and search for extraterrestrials in a very scientific way. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Intelligence
Go
People
" If I want popularity, I go to a chef's convention. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Popularity
Go
Want
" Pressure cookers are relatively inexpensive, they're in every kitchen store, your grandma probably had one, but a lot of people don't. A pressure cooker is interesting because by pressurizing the vessel, you're able to cook much hotter than the boiling point of water, and still have water be present. "
Nathan Myhrvold
You
Water
People
" I'm one of the first invention capitalists. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Capitalists
First
Invention
" 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?' "
Nathan Myhrvold
Opportunity
Love
Travel
" Researchers who examined the voting records of wine judges found that 90 percent of the time they give inconsistent ratings to a particular wine when they judge it on multiple occasions. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Give
Judges
Time
" 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
Why
Food
Asking
" 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
Got
Universe
Science
" Most estimates of the mortality risk posed by asteroid impacts put it at about the same risk as flying in a commercial airliner. However, you have to remember that this is like the entire human race riding the plane - it is one of the few risks that really could wipe us all out. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Risks
Flying
Race
" 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
Without
Resources
Power
" If you talk about sous-vide, then you have to talk about food safety, and microbiology, and heat. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Then
Food
Heat
" 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. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Elections
Truth
Successful
" If people don't get paid for their inventions, that's not a good thing. In the case of many patents, there are people who aren't in a position to take them to the next level. If you don't enforce your rights, no one is going to enforce them for you. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Level
You
Going
" If your kitchen smells good, your food lost something. "
Nathan Myhrvold
Smells
Good
Kitchen