{"author":"Nathan Myhrvold","author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold","total_quotes":25,"quotes":[{"text":"If you had a really good - battery, it wouldn't matter that the sun goes down at night and the wind stops blowing sometimes. But at the moment, battery technology is nowhere near good enough to use at utility scale.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["good","sun","night "],"id":7636,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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?'.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["love","work","science "],"id":12148,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["love","home","great "],"id":23287,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["funny","life","men "],"id":130321,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which ideas match the real world, and which ones can be ruled out. So conflicting ideologies persist indefinitely.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["culture","politics","world "],"id":133177,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["culture","heart","american "],"id":142660,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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!","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["people","greatest","want "],"id":152641,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["powerful","your dreams "],"id":153833,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["kitchen","think","why "],"id":189222,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"},{"text":"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.","author":"Nathan Myhrvold","tags":["business","powerful "],"id":218244,"author_id":"Nathan+Myhrvold"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":25,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}