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. Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother’s recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations? Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
People who grow up in a region doubtless have a better cultural awareness of their own cuisine, but it’s also true that a lot of locals go to McDonald’s, Applebee’s and the like. Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
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. Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
If I say I’ve got two versions of Word – that old one from 1982 that’s perfect, with zero defects; or the new one that’s got all this cool new stuff, but there might be a few bugs in it – people always want the new one. But I wouldn’t want them to operate a plane I was on with software that happened to be the latest greatest release! Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
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 Read Quote
If you want to do interesting software, you have to have a bunch of people do it, because the amount of software that one person can do isn’t that interesting. Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
Three things about water affect almost all of cooking. First are the hydrogen bonds, which is why it has an incredibly high boiling point. Another is that it’s a polar molecule, so that it dissolves a lot of things, and there are things that won’t mix with it. And then there’s how much energy it takes to heat water. Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
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. Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
I think you would find almost anyone who stands up for their patent rights has been called a patent troll. Nathan Myhrvold Read Quote
