Fathers of lazyness, remembered

It was a sad opening to 2007. While the end of 2006 saw the death of the godfather of funk and soul, J. Brown, the opening of 2007 has seen the death of two of the worlds most influential people: Robert Adler, inventor of the TV remote and Momofuku Ando, inventor of Ramen Noodles.

Though TV remote dude really only applies to the West, I spent so much of my childhood with one of his inventions in my hand, his death feels like the loss of a limb. More significantly, Ando is responsible for feeding about 100 million people per day and billions annually. I love his obit in the New York Times.

While I was in Indonesia it became impossible to live without ramen noodles. The second largest consumers of ramen in the world (China is #1) taught me a variety of ways to cook and enjoy noodles as fans of 'Geordie Soup' can attest to. Deep in the jungle, where refridgerators do not exist, ramen was the meal 3 times a day for half of the week. Whole isles of grocery stories were entirely dedicated to ramen, much in the same way we have for canned soup.

Amazingly both guys died in their 90's. As for lazyness, nothing can compare to Ramen. "Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don’t have to teach him anything."