Nathan Myhrvold quotes - page 3

There's no way I'm going to stand up for bad ingredients. We love seasonal ingredients. It's a false dichotomy to say that modern cooking is at odds with that, but some people want to have a great ingredient and no technique. (Nathan Myhrvold)
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Near Marseilles in the south of France, bouillabaisse is a cult food. In Toulouse and Carcassonne, the bean-based stew cassoulet is a cult food. Spain has paella and a number of others. Italy has so many, its cuisine is practically defined by them. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Our goal was to show people a vision of food they hadn't seen before. So, I had this idea of... let's cut all these things in half, and show a picture of the food in the pan, in the oven. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
There is a one-in-300 chance that Earth will be struck on March 16, 2880, by an asteroid large enough to destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human race. But, on the bright side, Prince could re-release his hit song with the new refrain 'We're gonna party like its twenty-eight seventy-nine.' View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
One of the ugly secrets of the renewable-energy industry is that its products make no economic sense unless they are highly subsidized. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
The world has shown that if you provide capital and expertise to an area that is starved for capital and expertise, really good things will happen. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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)
Anybody who can afford a box of business cards can afford a Web site. Any company with an 800 number can move its services to the Web for peanuts by comparison. The extreme case of corporate promotion is to strip away all other aspects of your business and sell goods or services via the Net alone, as amazon.com has done with books. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
The prize for ultimate inefficiency goes to America. We have built in so many checks and balances that our 'leaders' are the most thoroughly hogtied of any on Earth. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
I've been on a team that won the world championship of barbecue. But barbecue's interesting, because it's one of these cult foods like chili, or bouillabaisse. Various parts of the world will have a cult food that people get enormously attached to - there's tremendous traditions; there's secrecy. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
If people don't find what you are doing threatening, then it is probably not very important. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
For relatively modest amounts of sulfur dioxide injected into the atmosphere, you could easily cool Earth by 1% or more, if you want. (Nathan Myhrvold)
Now, to find dinosaurs, you hike around in horrible conditions looking for a dinosaur. It sounds really dumb, but that's what it is. It's horrible conditions, because wherever you have nice weather, plants grow, and you don't get any erosion, and you don't see any dinosaurs. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
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. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold