I don’t know when it first came up, but I’ve had conversations comparing the two more than once in life.

It always struck me as an odd comparison, but it’s really an essential one. Your gut reaction to the question says a lot about what you value and how you look at life.

I think most of my readership will probably say that Albert Einstein is easily more important than William Shakespeare.

Albert Einstein discovered science as we know it. He framed the world in the most accurate way we’ve seen. Without him, we would still be in the stone age of modern science.

And what did Shakespeare do? He wrote a few words. Performed a few plays. Got his works published. Big deal.

I don’t personally find the comparison that cut and dry. Einstein did a lot for science, but Shakespeare did as much — if not more — for the English language, literature, and entertainment.

I think I’ve always liked this oddball comparison because it gets to the root of the duality of my very personality.

I spend my life working with computers. I spend most of my free time working with computers.

But at the end of the day, I love to write a good story or draw. I love to read a good book, or watch an artistic movie.

To me, you can’t have one without the other. Einstein and Shakespeare are the respective embodiment of logic and creativity.

To me, Shakespeare is who I wish I could be while Einstein is who I feel like I should be.

How do you rate the matchup? Is it folly to compare the two, or is there a deeper philosophical point to the match-up?

Of the many random things my TiVo tapes, it has decided that I must like biographies.

It’s not completely off the mark. I do enjoy a good biography, but I’m generally not interested in the biography of Britney Spears or K.D. Lang. It takes a lot of sifting to get a biography that I don’t delete right away.

This weekend my TiVo caught me a gem. The biography of Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken and American fast food pioneer.

I checked out his wikipedia article and found it lacking in details compared to the show I watched on A&E, so I thought I’d blog about him.

Since I don’t have tons of links to support my information, you’ll have to trust my Sunday afternoon memory.

Born in 1890, Sanders didn’t start out as an entrepreneur. He was the oldest boy in a fatherless household where he had to take on far more responsibility than any young man should.

He eventually left home at an early age and was a drifter for most of his life. He moved from job to job, never keeping one for long.

His temper was reknowned. He got into fights more than once and was fired from jobs for such behavior. He was known to have pulled a gun on a competitor, plotted to kidnap his own kids (from his estranged wife), and got into a physical altercation in a courtroom with his own client when he briefly served as a lawyer.

The one thing Colonel Sanders was, though, was a salesman. He was also in the right place at the right time. At the age of 40, with the automobile becoming common, Sanders realized that people driving across the country would need a place to eat.

With the knowledge he gained at home, he concocted the perfect fried chicken recipe and begun serving it out of his own dining room. Before long, he had his own restaurant and hotel (after all, drivers also needed somewhere to sleep).

The problem with pan fried chicken, however, was that it just took too long to cook. Passersthrough just couldn’t wait the half an hour it took simply to prepare the chicken.

It was then that Sanders came across the pressure cooker. Generally used for vegetables, Sanders saw the potential for cooking chicken even faster using hot oil and pressure. With a few modifications, he basically invented the deep fryer and was able to get his chicken out in only 8 minutes.

It was a revolution for cooking quality food, and Sanders began to franchise out his chicken to restaurants around the world, personally going to each restaurant and teaching them how to make his famous Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Sanders was such a control freak that he demanded that the chicken be cooked to his exact specifications. If a restaurant fell out of line, he would take back his fryers and his secret spice and that would be the end of their franchise.

Although he was a great cook, salesman, and pioneer, Colonel Sanders was not a savvy businessman. He sold his franchise at the age of 74 and refused to take a sizeable amount of stock in the new company since “he didn’t trust stock.” I guess that’s what the Great Depression will do to you.

Despite his missed chance at being a billionaire, Colonel Sanders was a pioneer of the fast food industry and an American icon.