Big Bang Theory actor comes out in Times profile.

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Jim Parsons: I’m Gay

Glossy exercise machines are cropping up in parks. It’s the latest bit of government “nudge theory”, writes Sophie Robehmed.

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The rise of the adult playground

In recent years, climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us.

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Temperature Rising: Clouds’ Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters

Scorpacciata is a term that means consuming large amounts of a particular local ingredient while it's in season. It's a good way to eat. In theory, it's spring. Not that you'd be able to tell it from the weather, which seems unable to decide between parboiling and deep-freezing various chunks of the country, but I'm clinging on to a few telltale signs at the farmers market and in produce aisles. While summer's sumptuous heirloom tomatoes and versatile, velvety okra are undeniably wonderful, spring's unique bounty feeds my senses and my soul. After a season of hearty, dense, nourishing and occasionally dull root vegetables, the earth is coming to life again in a riot of color and flavor. Might as well celebrate over dinner. Fava Beans Take a second to get all the Hannibal Lechter and Chianti jokes out of your system; it happens to the best of us. Now – these nutty, meaty legumes are only available for a cruelly short period each spring, and they're a bit labor intensive if you're buying them still in the pod. They're worth every bit of fuss. Favas are gfantastic sautéed and served with pasta, mashed warm with butter and cream, puréed with garlic and olive oil into a spread or tossed with goat cheese, olive oil and lemon and served as a salad. – Some opening advice: Removing the fava bean's shell is a two-part process. First, grab the stem of the spongy pod and pull it down to unzip each side, or use a knife to make a slit. Discard the pods. Using a strainer, lower the inner beans into boiling water for 30 seconds, and then into a bowl of ice water. Then remove each one's tough outer coating by nicking it with a sharp knife and peeling to reveal the bright inner bean. Fiddlehead Ferns These unfurled ostrich ferns are named for their resemblance to the tops of violins, and their wild, asparagus-like flavor is music to a spring vegetable fiend's mouth. Unless they're pickled or frozen, fiddleheads don't keep long, so use them as soon as possible after purchase. To prepare them, snip anything past the first inch of stem and wash off grit and remnants of the papery brown husk. Raw or undercooked fiddleheads can cause stomach discomfort, so steam, boil or blanch and saute them to make sure they're sufficiently cooked. A good rule of thumb is to treat them like you would an asparagus and aim for tender, but with a bit of crispness. Fergus Henderson's pungent anchovy dressing is an ideal complement to the ferns' nutty, bitter bite, but they're also a showstopper atop pizza and pasta , or simply tossed with butter, mint and a squeeze of lemon. – Buy early, buy pickily Like fava beans, fiddlehead season lasts only a few weeks, so grab as many of them as you can afford. Opt for the brightest ones; some brown on the stem can and should be trimmed off, but pass up any with oxidized spots on the central body. Sunchokes This earthy tasting tuber, a sunflower root also known as a Jerusalem artichoke, is harvested in the fall, or may overwinter underground to emerge as an early spring crop. While sunchokes can be subbed in for any cooking preparation suitable for potatoes, their flavor is closer to that of water chestnuts or jicama and…AND they can be eaten raw. So peel them (or don't) and roast, mash, hash, gratin, purée, boil, bake, or turn them into a silky soup if you're looking to cook them. Slice or shred them raw into salads, grate for a crunchy slaw or add to a crudité plate as a conversation starter. Sunchokes also make smashing pickles and crisp up nicely as an alternative to potato chips . One note of caution: moderate your consumption lest you and your loved ones discovered how they earned the nickname “Jerusalem fartichokes.” – Prep tip Peeled sunchokes can brown quickly, so soak them in water with a little bit of lemon juice until you're ready to use them. Salsify and Scorzonera Like the sunchoke, salsify and its darker-skinned cousin scorzonera take a long winter's nap and a fall-planted crop of this root vegetable can be dug up while the new one is planted. They are often used interchangeably and are called “oyster plant” because their flavor is akin to that particular bivalve – but they looks pretty much like a slim, filthy carrot. Also like sunchokes, salsify and scorzonera brown easily, so after you wash and peel off the outer skin to reveal the creamy flesh, submerge it in lemon water. Then go wild. The roots stand up to braising, baking, poaching, pan roasting, or boiling and make a glorious gratin or a satisfying fritter . – Handle with care The skin from these roots can stain clothing or skin, so wear gloves and don't go placing them on any linens you'd like to stay pristine. Ramps Ramps are a member of the allium family (Allium tricoccum if you care to get all categorical about it) and are akin to a wild onion. The flavor is pungent and slightly nutty, somewhere between garlic and leeks, and both the leafy tops and tender bulbs are edible. Food fanatics get rabid about them not just because they're incredibly delicious, but also because they're somewhat of a rarity. Ramps are difficult, if not impossible to cultivate, so they must be foraged from cool woodlands (for free) or as is often the case, bought at a premium from someone else who's gone out to do the dirty work (for anywhere from $8 to $20 a pound). They're also only in season for a very brief window in the spring, so chefs and home cooks get fanatical about jamming as many of them onto their menus and into their ramp holes as humanly possible during these few weeks. This has led to a certain amount of food world backlash in the past few years. (“OMG, ramps are so, like Spring 2011. I'm so over ramps. Ramps are so, like whatever.”) These people are wrong. Ramps remain thoroughly scrumptious, year after year – a springy little “Howdy do!” from the earth. But I thoroughly support the grousing because I live in fear that these people will discover and plunder my secret foraging spot over by the…wait, I'm not telling you. Along with the tremendous collective appetite comes a real danger of over-harvesting. Foragers must take care to pick only a portion of the patch, avoid taking any young or flowering plants, and replant the rhizome (the underground stem from which bunches of ramps grow) to ensure robust rampage for years to come. – How to eat them : Not raw, unless you're prone to walking around chawing on garlic bulbs, or have vampires over whom you'd like dominion. Better to purée, sauté to serve atop pasta or pizza, fry, pickle, or in general treat as you would scallions or garlic scapes. One of my favorite ways to enjoy them (and I realize this flies in the face of the not-raw rule, so I never serve this to company) is to pound the greens and bulbs into pesto and spread on crackers, stir into pasta or drizzle atop roasted chicken. It works well anywhere you'd use a traditional basil pesto and can be frozen in ice cube trays (though you'll want to hold off adding the cheese until you're ready to thaw and serve it) to let a taste of spring pop up after all the ramp chatter has wilted away. – Kat's Ramp Pesto (originally published at Slashfood) Ingredients (quantities to taste) Handful of ramps – bulbs and greens Olive Oil Kosher Salt Pine Nuts Parmesan Cheese Instructions Roughly chop greens and bulbs into 1/2 inch pieces on a cutting board, and place in mortar or rough-textured bowl with a pinch of kosher salt. With a pestle or wooden spoon, grind the ramp against the surface of the bowl, using the salt's grit to help break down the fibers until they form a somewhat uniform paste. Sprinkle in pine nuts and crush them into the paste with the mortar. Once they're integrated, drizzle in olive oil, stirring constantly until the desired consistency is achieved. Sprinkle in grated Parmesan cheese to taste. Next up – morels. Got a favorite spring vegetable or a question about the ones above? Shout it out in the comments below and we'll do our best to help you make the most of it.

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Ramps, fiddleheads, sunchokes and other spring vegetables about which people are freaking out

After 70 years, two papers on the theory of code breaking by mathematician Alan Turing are released to the National Archives.

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GCHQ releases WWII Turing papers

You can tell House Speaker John A. Boehner isn’t running for president. On Tuesday morning when he was asked to respond to a comment Mitt Romney made that Russia is the United States’ number one geopolitical foe, Boehner began by advancing an increasingly unusual theory in American politics. Read full article > >

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John Boehner offers veiled critique of Mitt Romney’s Russia comments

As publisher of the secret journal of purged Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang and other political blockbusters, New Century Press has grown accustomed to dealing with bursts of rage from Beijing. But it never expected a fuss over its latest venture: a densely footnoted monograph on political theory by an 83-year-old communist with a heart condition. Read full article > >

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Chinese Communist Party frets over a new threat: A book by an aged communist

When the crew of the Virginia scallop trawler Cinmar hauled a mastodon tusk onto the deck in 1970, another oddity dropped out of the net: A dark, tapered stone blade, nearly eight inches long and still sharp. Read full article > >

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Radical theory of first Americans places stone-age Europeans in Delmarva 20,000 years ago

IRAN HAS LAUNCHED a frantic flurry of initiatives in the past two weeks, most of them bellicose — from suspending oil shipments to Europe to allegedly attempting to assassinate Israeli diplomats . But the Obama administration and its allies appear likely to seize on Tehran’s contrasting dispatch of a 200-word letter agreeing to a renewal of talks on its nuclear program. Delivered at a moment when sanctions appear to be causing severe disruption to the Iranian economy, the offer raises the hope that the theory underlying years of U.S. policy — that international pressure would eventually cause Iran’s current leaders to bargain seriously — could at last be proved. It will, at least, be put to a crucial test. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: The test of talking to Iran

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement. The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates — but few, if any, academic gains. Read full article > >

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In schools, self-esteem boosting is losing favor to rigor, finer-tuned praise

Ex-News of the World editor Colin Myler resumes giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry and says he believed the “one rogue reporter” theory on phone hacking.

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Myler thought NoW hacking limited

If rumors were dollars, the arcane world of particle physics would have enough cash to solve the Euro crisis. For weeks, statements circulating on physics blogs have hinted at the discovery of an elusive particle essential to our understanding of how the universe works. Called the Higgs boson, this particle — if spotted — would all but complete the fundamental theory of particle physics, known as the Standard Model. Confirmation of the Higgs would solve the mystery of why matter has the property that physicists call mass — the resistance to being shoved around. Read full article > >

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Scientists close in on linchpin of physics, the ‘God particle’

So much for the theory that Albert Haynesworth would have an All-Pro season with the New England Patriots after being traded by the Washington Redskins. According to Boston Herald report , he isn’t even on the team, released two days after his disappearing act in the team’s loss Sunday to the New York Giants. Read full article > >

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Albert Haynesworth released by Patriots

In London, the Flat Earth Society explains that we live on a giant disk. In Petersburg, Ky., the Creation Museum shows cave men and dinosaurs frolicking together. And in a movie theater near you, “ Anonymous ,” which opened Friday, reveals how the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays. O brave new world — the culmination of more than 300 years of Enlightenment thinking and empirical science. But in the words of the Bard — whoever he was — “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!” Read full article > >

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Essay: ‘Anonymous’ and the Shakespeare conspiracy theory that wouldn’t die

Republicans who are eager to repair the party’s battered image among Hispanic voters and unseat President Obama next year have long promoted a single-barrel solution to their two-pronged problem: putting Sen. Marco Rubio on the national ticket. The charismatic Cuban American lawmaker from Florida, the theory goes, could prompt Hispanics to consider supporting the GOP ticket — even after a primary contest in which dust-ups over illegal immigration have left some conservative Hispanics uneasy. Read full article > >

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Marco Rubio on national ticket could be risky bet for Republican Party