Word: perfective
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...kitchens, one item they found they couldn't live without was a $1,300 immersion circulator, which allowed them to find and maintain the exact temperature at which egg whites and yolks begin to set. A slow-poached egg-- say, at 143°F for 90 minutes-- is that rare, perfect synthesis of greenmarket and high tech. When cracked open, the thing spills out ludicrously egg-shaped and ridiculously soft, the yolk suspended between raw and cooked, the cloudy white freed from that slight rubberiness I never knew bothered me until I had an egg without it. David Chang, who drops...
...that I've had so many perfect eggs and unfrozen my past so happily, I'm thinking about doing some poaching myself. Not with a thermometer but with the old swirl-the-vinegared-water technique my grandmother used. Then I'll pop the eggs on some asparagus, or a piece of salmon, and think about her. Or pretend to, while I really think about the salmon...
With a fat salary and that "laser-rocket arm" he winks at in a Sprint commercial, Peyton Manning will never be like us. But his championship failure delivers some connection. "It gives us an entry into his humanity, his vulnerability," says Coakley. "He isn't perfect, despite the fact he's so damn good." Peyton's brother Cooper naturally disagrees with any such rationale for cheering on the Bears, who--despite featuring a frighteningly inconsistent quarterback, Rex Grossman--have the type of defense that can shut down Peyton. "Average Joes want heroes," Cooper says. "Average Joes want guys that...
...must always aim straight up to retain its curvature. As the container is slowly rotated on a turntable; making one revolution every six seconds, the mercury rises gently toward the edges and dips in the middle, the way coffee does when it is stirred in a cup. In perfect deference to the laws of physics, the metal's highly reflective surface takes the form of a parabola, the shape of solid mirrors used in conventional telescopes to focus starlight into a sharp image. Says Ermanno Borra, the Laval astrophysicist who built it: "It's a wonderfully simple arrangement...
There's nothing especially venal about the ancients in this regard; nobody's perfect or ever was. The classical world knew crosshatching as much as bands of white and black; the Greeks and Romans had their moments of doubt. Here's Virgil's Aeneas in the underworld, catching sight of his erstwhile lover, Dido, Queen of Carthage, whom he had deserted as she climbed onto her funeral pyre: "Oh, dear god, was it I who caused your death?/ I swear by the stars, by the Powers on high ... I left your shores, my Queen, against my will ... Stay a moment...