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They don’t get bathroom breaks, dinner breaks, or lunch breaks.  It seems as if they should have all three, but if they don’t what difference does it make?  Someone will vote for them when they aren’t there for any of those reasons.

The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen - New York Times

At the bottom of that range, a difference of just 5 or 10 degrees can mean the difference between juicy meat and dry, between a well-balanced cup of coffee or tea and a bitter, over-extracted one. And as every cook learns early on, it’s all too easy to burn the outside of a hamburger or a potato before the center is warm.

On the grill, this means having high- and low-heat zones and moving the food from one to the other. On the stove top or in the oven, start at 450 or 500 degrees, and then turn the heat down to around 250, ideally taking the food out until the pan or oven temperature has fallen significantly.

Another solution is to cook the food perfectly with low heat, let it cool some, and then flavor its surface with a brief blast of intense heat from a hot pan or even a gas torch. More and more restaurants are adopting this method, especially those that practice sous-vide cooking, in which food is sealed in a plastic bag, placed in a precisely controlled water bath and heated through at exactly the temperature that gives the desired doneness.

All these are two-step processes, but the same principle works for three steps or more. Rotisserie cooking alternates high and low heat many times: as the meat turns on the spit, each area of the surface is briefly exposed to high browning heat, then given time for that dose of energy to dissipate, part of it into the meat but part back out into the cool air. So the meat interior cooks through at a more moderate temperature. Similarly, steaks and chops cook more evenly on high grill heat — and faster as well — if you become a human rotisserie and turn them not once or twice but as often as you can stand to, even dozens of times, every 15 or 30 seconds.

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Inside the mind of a serial seducer - TODAY: Relationships - MSNBC.com

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Q: Can two-factor authentication really work on a Web site? Biometrics isn’t feasible because most people don’t have the hardware. One-time password tokens are a hassle, and they don’t really scale well. Image identification and PC fingerprinting technology that some banks are using is pretty easy to defeat with an evil proxy (i.e., any phishing Web site).A: Two-factor authentication works fine on some Web sites. My employer, BT, uses two-factor access for the corporate network, and it works great. Where two-factor authentication won’t work is in reducing fraud in electronic banking, electronic brokerage accounts, and so on. That’s because the problem isn’t an authentication problem. The reasoning is subtle, and I’ve written about it here and here. What I predicted will occur from two-factor authentication — and what we’re seeing now — is that fraud will initially decrease as criminals shift their attacks to organizations that have not yet deployed the technology, but will return to normal levels as the technology becomes ubiquitous and criminals modify their tactics to take it into account.

Bruce Schneier Blazes Through Your Questions - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is released.

Click here for PDF

• We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.
• We judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years. (Because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate, however, DOE and the NIC assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program.)
• We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
• We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.
• Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

It’s a good thing that we got this report before they started a war with them…

As the media focus on international terror, a Texan pleads guilty to possessing a weapon of mass destruction.

The terror threat at home, often overlooked | csmonitor.com

Investigators found a sodium-cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands, more than a hundred explosives, half a million rounds of ammunition, dozens of illegal weapons,

Peru signs up for 260,000 OLPC laptops

Peru signs up for 260,000 OLPC laptops | CNET News.com

One month after the One Laptop Per Child charity went into mass production with its $188 laptop, the Peruvian government has signed a contract to purchase 260,000 units. Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT professor and founder of the project, announced the deal on Saturday. He also revealed that Mexican billionaire and longtime friend, Carlos Slim, had ordered 50,000 units for distribution in Mexico.

Voters reject Chavez’s referendum - CNN.com

Venezuelans, by the slimmest of margins, rejected a constitutional referendum that would have allowed President Hugo Chavez to seek re-election indefinitely and tightened socialism’s grip on the oil-rich Latin American nation.