Ice is the only common solid that behaves this way. Glass is smooth and you do not slide on it. Polished stone is smooth and you do not slide on…
Ask why the sky is blue and you will get one of three answers. That it reflects the sea. That the atmosphere is somehow blue in the way tinted glass…
Olive oil occupies a strange position in the supermarket. It is one of the few products where the packaging carries a technical classification most shoppers have never had explained, and…
The awkwardness of dining alone is mostly anticipatory: it is worse in advance than in the moment, and it shrinks quickly with a few deliberate decisions. Here are twelve that…
Dessert is where cooking becomes closest to chemistry, and where small errors are least forgiving. Here are twelve from around the world, and what each one is actually teaching you.…
When something arrives from elsewhere, people tend to name it after wherever it came through rather than wherever it came from. Multiply that by a few centuries of trade and…
