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.

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.

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.

Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

The physics of water is central to cooking, because food is mostly water. All steak that you cook is actually boiled on the inside.

Some article called me the most feared man in Silicon Valley. Good Lord! Why? My teenage boys got a kick out of it: 'Dad, how could this be true? You're not even the most feared person in this house.'

A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.