“Everything has to be checked out very carefully. Otherwise you become one of these people who believe all kinds of crazy stuff and doesn’t understand the world they are in. Nobody understands the world they are in, but some people are better off at it than others”
:Richard Feynman in The Meaning of it All
“No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questiosn investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literary or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race. Thank you.”
:Are you listening Mr. bin Laden?? You would think this was something said in the wake of the recent events, but the words above were instead the closing remarks of a lecture by Richard P. Feynman at the University of Washington (Seattle) in April, 1963. I couldn’t agree more!
“I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is value”
:Richard P. Feynman in The Meaning of it All on the question of the value of science.
I don’t mind traveling as much as I used to. What I do mind however, is the aftermath of traveling and coming back to tons of snail-mail (mostly bills and junk mail at that), a cold apartment, dirty laundry, multiple voicemails, drooping or nearly dying plants since no one was there to water them and all kinds of things at work and home to play catch up with.
So I guess I’m busy trying to get caught up… but here’s some fun new stuff for you. Highly recommend reading the article about Typhoon — a restaurant I ate at while on my trip out…
New in Thought — caught in the act!* on Monday, October 29, 2001
New in Rants and Raves* on Monday, October 29, 2001
New in Eavesdropped!* on Tuesday, October 30, 2001
The last time I was in LA nearly about a year ago, I drove past a place called Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe on Sunset Boulevard right by Sunset Strip. For some reason, that place stuck in my mind as a landmark and so this time I decided to actually go check it out. And as far as restaurants go, it was a lot more like my kind of place than some of the other places I ate at while in LA.
I prefer the more laid-back and fun atmosphere for dining any day as compared to a high-falutin, snobbish restaurant. For starters the food at a high-falutin restaurant is generally not my type… I’m not interested in eating escargot (I head a good one once — why do they call them escargot? Because no one would eat them if they were called snails!) or eels, or calamari or any sch stuff that is considered exotic. Chicken is about as exotic as I get! 🙂 My problem with the more exotic foods is totally psychological… the image of the animal being eaten comes into my head and totally turns me off. Except in the case of chicken where I have succeeded in conditioning myself to dissociate boneless chicken from the image of an actual chicken with its head being cut off — note I said boneless!
Anyhow, so as I drove from one end of Sunset Blvd to the other I decided on a whim to actually stop @ Wolfgang Puck’s for lunch. I liked the atmosphere. Nice and lively and definitely non-stuffy. The bartender served a good Sapphire Tonic with the pre-requisite two limes (you’d be amazed at how many leave out the second lime). They were reasonable priced for California standards. Service was quick and the Spicy Chicken Pizza that I ordered was actually really good. So everything was going really well, except as it always happens, I got a small piece of bone in my chicken 🙁 But still once I got past the bone crunching in my teeth, the Pizza was great, the food was great and the atmossphere was great. I’d definitely go back there again and hope that the bone was only an unfortunate oversight which won’t repeat itself!
hmm.. I guess if there was no bone, Wolfgang Puck’s would have gotten a full thumbs up. But I think I’ll have to give them a partial thumbs up for now!
Oh and on a similar note, another place I dined at in LA was a restaurant called Typhoon (see the article about Typhoon I found on the web while writing this blog…) at the Santa Monica County Airport. Cool location — right off the run way so you can see the private planes taking off and landing. The food was a different story altogether. My friend actually ordered (and ate them for that matter!) Frogs Legs! They also had a whole section on the menu titled “Insects” — yup that’s exactly what I was looking for. Most of the more — I was going to say exotic, but I think eccentric would be a better choice — eccentric foods are always deep fried… I guess once you fry it, it all tastes the same… be it frogs legs, ants, cockroaches, crickets and whatever else people eat — I had read far enough to already kill my appetite!
The food at Typhoon was not to my liking — I guess after seeing the menu and seeing the things both on our table and others I doubt anything would have been to my liking that evening! 😉 So at most I can give it a thumbs flat.