booknewb

"There are no secrets. There are no secret recipes. There are no secret techniques. Everything you learn in the kitchen are either you are told, open-sourced by your immediate superior and that's been shared with everybody in the kitchen; Or you have learned it over time painfully.  The ability to tell when a steak is cooked by listening to it in the pan or on the grill, Or determining that a piece of fish is probably ready to come out of the pan just from the sound of it. These are things you learn through repetition. And that is the great secret.  This is how professionals learn. This is how home cooks should learn. People shouldn't be intimidated by recipes. They should understand that professionals learn through getting it wrong, getting it wrong, getting it wrong, getting it wrong, starting to get it right, eventually gets it right until it becomes second nature. Repetition repetition repetition. " This was part of a StarTalk interview with Anthony Bourdain...

This was beautiful.  If in another universe I was an author, this would be the book that I would have liked to have written. It tells the story of Francisco "Frankie" Presto, from his birth to his death. All the while, brushing shoulders with well-known people of music.  It's kind of a historical retelling, including a collection of sort of interviews about how different people met Frankie. Here's one beautiful moment in the book. "Papa" "Yes, Kai?" "My fingers hurt." "Music is pain." "Really?" "It's something my teacher told me." "What are these things?" "Those are calluses." "Why am i getting them?" "Because you're learning. The more you play, the harder they will get." "Yesterday they were bleeding." "Yesterday you tried a lot of songs." "I was terrible." "No, you weren't." "I'll be bett...

"I've played digitally before for years just for fun, (but) p laying vinyl's different, because things can go wrong. The turntables can breakdown. There can be feedback. It's not perfect. And so it requires a certain level of being super attentive a hundred percent of the time. You can't just press a button and everything works perfectly.  And I love that. I love that things can go wrong. You're on your toes constantly. You're constantly working.  You're looking through your record bag of what you're going to play next. That record's now skipping. I've got to transition to another record quickly. There's something ephemeral about it that can change in a moment's notice. And every night's different as a result of that." This was part of a Nerdist podcast episode with Elijah Wood and Samuel Barnett.

Stephen: " Grief cannot be fixed. It can only be experienced.  Unless you allow yourself to experience it, it will stay. " Patton: "Yep, It can't be remedied, it must be endured. And it's the endurance that weirdly enough becomes the remedy." Stephen: "It's the demon that must be named and then it can go." This was from a Late Show with Stephen Colbert episode. The guest was Patton Oswalt.

"As an educator, it's not about me. It's never about me.  It's about the knowledge and wisdom of the natural world, and how your knowledge and wisdom of that can empower you to make decisions you take ownership of.  So I'm duty-bound as a scientist and an educator to share this information with you. What you do after that in a free society, that's your business. I don't lobby congress. I don't lead marches. I don't give speeches at alleys. Cause that implies you want people to do what you do and to say what you say. I never care about that. All I want people to do is be enlightened.  [...] For me the goal is a smarter country. For me the goal is people who can think for themselves.  [...] (That people can) think for themselves not by telling them what to think but by training them how to think." This was part of a Nerdist podcast episode with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

It's an interesting view on the modern dating scene in the US through the eyes of a stand-up comic. Most are pretty easily identifiable, like the anxieties over text messages. Some I'd say are still different in the Philippines, like Online Dating being not as prevalent, or m aybe I'm part of a segment that does not see as much.  Aziz has a bit that goes something like "Your grandmother didn't have 50 guys texting her all night saying how good she looked when she met your grandfather".  Time being a factor. People before didn't have the circumstances we have now. Likewise, people in the future will have advancements we don't have or know. Also,  people were meeting differently. They were meeting people that were relatively close to their homes. Nowadays, people have the option to meet through bigger channels and be introduced to a bigger number of potential partners. With the surge of potential partners and options, the paradox of choice surface...

David and Goliath is about how the seemingly disadvantaged, small people or underdogs, triumph over big enemies.  A couple items: Sometimes the disadvantages are not what they seem, they are what makes the game different and strategic. And inversely, sometimes what seems like an advantage can become a stumbling block. Sometimes, the things that are out of our control, that which makes us different are the ones that push us to grow through it. Like dyslexia, a torn family and/or race issues. The last is that power is not what it seems. Power can be miscalculated.  One that stood out and was excruciatingly painful to read, was the story of the doctor who treated leukemia. ________________________________________________________________________ Tipping Point.  I've forgotten a lot about Tipping Point since I've read it last year. I only thought of including it since I read a Malcolm Gladwell book again. From what I remember it's a collection...