A Three-minute Silence

Meanwhile, the world mourns Momofuko Ando - the inventor of Ramen noodles - a man whose work has touched so many of our lives.

Here's the PhD Comic Tribute

And here's a lovely appreciation by Lawrence Downes over at the New York Times.

Personally, I don't eat anywhere near as much Ramen as my single student status would suggest, and then only with additional vegetables to make it a better, more balanced meal (Mom, Dad: Please note!), but I still can't help feeling a sense of attachment to the man who single-handedly doubled my cooking repertoire.

The thing about making Ramen is, it's such a mystical experience, isn't it? It's almost like inspiration. There you are with this set of notions curled and tightly packed together, and then you break this mass of solid confusion into a few smaller pieces (taking care to catch the little bits that fly loose when you do this), let them simmer for a while, and before you know it you can reach in there and draw out one clear strand of an idea, which you then have to loop about in words to keep it from slipping back into the general mess. And each time you do this it seems a little bit of a miracle - you're never sure at what point the dense coils of data turned into a palatable idea, and it's always hard to believe that the transformation really worked. People say PhD students eat a lot of Ramen because it's cheap and easy to make, but I think it's because of the nature of this transformation, because we secretly dream of the day when our research can go from data to results in just three minutes [1].

Notes

[1] This 2-3 minute thing, is, of course, a total con. Sure, cooking Ramen takes three minutes - assuming you just happen to have a pot with 2 cups of boiling water handy and like your noodles on the seriously al dente side.

I wonder if there are people who seriously time themselves to make Ramen? Do they spend years in training try to break the 2-minute Ramen? Is it likely to become an Olympic event?