He prowls Patagonia's headquarters, in Ventura, California, checking in on new designs (he showed me a sturdy down jacket that felt about as heavy as a paperclip and then said he'd kill me before telling me how they make it) and tinkering with a lightweight camp stove of his own invention at his desk.

WSJ: Patagonia's Founder is America's Most Unlikely Business Guru

He had said, in an interview with me, that devolution would kill Nationalism stone dead.

BBC: Spectre at the feast

And believe me, the gamers who (try to) kill me online all day are a lot closer to me than the kids I go to high school with.

ECONOMIST: The outcasts reply

They made me want to fight with lightsabers, kill some Sith (or maybe some Jedi) and explore the galaxy.

FORBES: Watch The New 'Star Wars: The Old Republic' CG Trailer

Japanese firms pile in late as resellers or with their own me-too versions and kill themselves in a price war while U.S. entrepreneurs move on to new technologies.

FORBES: A fable of two companies

Now I had never in my pitiful life knowingly exchanged pleasantries over lunch, or any other meal for that matter, with a man who was regularly trying to kill me.

NPR: Sergeant Notes Odd Rituals of War in Afghanistan

"When you have people taken hostage in such large numbers by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages - as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most appropriate because there could be no negotiation, " he told journalists.

BBC: Algeria crisis: Captors and hostages die in assault