Ultimately, my Ph.D. is in mathematical physics, focusing on quantum field theory and curved space-time, and I worked with Stephen Hawking.

If you have two steaks, one that's an inch thick, one that's 2 inches thick, how much longer does the thicker one need to cook? It's four times as long. It goes roughly like the square. How come cookbooks don't tell you that?

If you have a block of ballistics gelatin and a high-speed camera, pretty soon somebody gets a gun!

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.

Business is war! Its leaders are strategic commanders, who boldly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - and who perform other acts of derring-do. This kind of talk sounds great in the boardroom, and, for that matter, in the bookstore, where dozens of authors counsel would-be corporate warriors.

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.

The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.