Your drink is only as good as the worst thing you put in it. Capture an aromatic ingredient in an infusion ; concentrate a flavorful ingredient into a syrup; combine a syrup and an infusion of the same ingredient to make a liqueur. A bitter flavor will dull the crispness of a sour one. There are so…

Baby Dies After Alleged Rape By Mom's Boyfriend Bridal Party Perfectly Slays Beyonce Dance At Wedding Alleged Blue Jays Beer Tosser Suggests Police Have It Wrong Mischief Charge Laid In Blue Jays Beer-Tossing Incident The Story Behind Kim Kardashian's Stolen $4.5 Million Diamond Ring Racist Messages…

Out of the ­10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life, asks Rolf Dobelli. Photograph: Guardian/Graphic I n the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with…

The intense hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers illustrates another way that the National Rifle Association helps mass murderers — by delaying how quickly they can be identified. The inability to quickly track the gunpowders in the Boston bombs is due to government policy designed and promoted by…

Spending time with devices instead of interacting with people may hinder communication skills, researchers say. Feng Li/Getty Images I recently watched my sister perform an act of magic. We were sitting in a restaurant, trying to have a conversation, but her children, 4-year-old Willow and…

GLORY-BOUND Bruce Willis, Quentin Tarantino, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Travolta in 1994, shortly after Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In late 1992, Quentin Tarantino left Amsterdam, where he had spent three months, off and on, in a one-room apartment with…

This story has been corrected since it was originally published. I hit the pause button roughly one-third of the way through the first episode of “House of Cards,” the political drama premiering on Netflix Feb. 1. By doing so, I created what is known in the world of Big Data as an “event” — a…

Daily chart The cost of living around the world TOKYO has reclaimed its place as the world's most expensive city, according to the latest cost of living index from our sister company, the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Japanese city has ranked first 14 times in the last 20 years; only Zurich…

Image credit: ThinkStock In 2012, Randall Munroe of the webcomic xkcd published a description of the Saturn V rocket using only the 1000 most frequent words in English. Under this restriction, the rocket was called "up-goer five," the command module was "people box," and the liquid hydrogen feed…

Havelt's team exploited the backdoors to remotely take control of the cameras. With the ability to view their output, change their direction, and zoom in and out, the Trustwave employees trained them on computer keyboards as employees in the unidentified company entered passwords. With the help of…

GOP Pols Condemn Trump’s Remarks By Peter Slattery GOP Pols Condemn Trump’s Remarks By Peter Slattery After The Washington Post released a 2005 audio recording of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump making graphic comments about women, various GOP lawmakers have taken to Twitter to condemn…

If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity. It would be Realities Of Your Industry 101, because we don’t teach them and this results in lots of unnecessary pain and suffering. This post aspires to be README.txt for…

On the set of "The Canyons" in Los Angeles last summer: Amanda Brooks, Lindsay Lohan and Paul Schrader. Jeff Minton for The New York Times Lindsay Lohan moves through the Chateau Marmont as if she owns the place, but in a debtor-prison kind of way. She’ll soon owe the hotel $46,000. Heads turn…

The other night, I spent two and a half hours in the company of a group of people I’ve known and cared about for most of my life: the dozen or so subjects of Michael Apted’s landmark “7 Up” documentary series. The series began in 1964, with what was intended to be a one-off documentary about the…

Orlando's share-picking skills were purr-fect. Photograph: Jill Insley The Observer 's panel of stock-picking professionals has been undone in our 2012 investment challenge by a ginger feline called Orlando who spent time paw-ing over the FT . The Observer portfolio challenge pitted professionals…

Four-star dining! Luxury cars! European getaways! An exclusive investigation reveals how Illinois politicians are living large on their campaigns’ dime.

Recently I read legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's autobiography. One of the many things from his book that resonated with me was his strong belief that voracious reading was a key to his creativity. "I've forgotten who it was that said creation is memory," kurosawa said. "My own experiences and…

Not long ago, Square CEO Jack Dorsey challenged his team to create a solution for accepting payments at Starbucks, which the mobile-payments company had partnered with in August . When an engineer worked out a solution (using QR codes within the Square Wallet app that could tap into Starbucks'…

ABC bulk produce markets stock the items that the city determines will be sold at a fixed price, about 13 cents per pound. Photo by Leah Rimkus. “To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.” CITY OF BELO…

England’s big cities are getting a surprising taste of autonomy LAST April David Cameron made a final plea to voters, who were then about to decide whether their cities should have elected mayors. “Britain stands on the brink of exciting democratic change,” cajoled the prime minister. “This is a…

Sir Roger Moore in 1985s "A View to a Kill" 1962-2012 Danjaq LLC and United Artists Corporation, All Rights. Follow @TIMECulture He’s far more than a raised eyebrow, you know. Sir Roger Moore has played the iconic part of James Bond on seven occasions—more than any other actor. Though not considered…

T he snow burst through the trees with no warning but a last-second whoosh of sound, a two-story wall of white and Chris Rudolph’s piercing cry: “Avalanche! Elyse!” The very thing the 16 skiers and snowboarders had sought — fresh, soft snow — instantly became the enemy. Somewhere above, a pristine…

Even as water grows more precious, the Environmental Protection Agency has permitted oil and gas, mining and other industries to contaminate aquifers in more than 1,500 places, many of them in Western states stricken by drought. Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to…

Chadult movie ... The Dark Knight Rises. Photograph: Allstar Collection/Warner Bros T here were many words and phrases that made it big in 2012 . Omnishambles. Gangnam Style. Fifty Shades of Pleb. There were also many equally evocative words and phrases that never made the headlines, because they…

Funny things to ask Siri Siri, Apple's voice assistant for iPhone and iPad that was first introduced with the iPhone 4S in 2011, is one funny virtual guy (or gal, depending on which Voice Gender you've chosen). Here, we bring you a list of 61 questions that you should try asking Siri. You might be…

If you’re coming to this post because of an allegation that TED has “banned discussion of GMOs” or has a relationship with Monsanto, please know that these rumors are not true. We have not banned these topics, and we have no relationship with Monsanto. In fact, we have many great talks on food and…

Katie Holmes files for divorce from Tom Cruise and heads to New York with Suri., By Alo Ceballos/Filmmagic (Holmes); by Barnaby Hall/Getty Images (Man). Tom Cruise was in a state because he didn’t have a girl. “Can you believe my sister can’t even get me a girlfriend?” he said to David Miscavige,…