National Geographic Society

New Restaurant Reviews: Cafe Cluny, Nightingale 9

Is it summer yet? Not quite. But our dining professionals found themselves in the kind of casually inviting spaces that seem to usher in the warm weather (at least, we hope they will). Robert Sietsema checked in on longtime West Village favorite Cafe Cluny, while Tejal Rao ventured to Carroll Garde ... More >>

Café Cluny Chooses a Surprising New Chef

Free radical

Class Action Listings

Under the Toque: New Chef at Tocqueville, Farmers in the Kitchen

​Jason Lawless has ascended to the position of Tocqueville's chef de cuisine. [Eater] The Bedford in Williamsburg is also getting a new chef--Jason Michael Giordano, formerly of Hotel Griffou. [Grub Street]

'Talking Landscape: Early Media Work, 1974-1984'

Lucy Cooke, Sloth Documentarian, Shares About the Animal She Calls 'Cute Crack'

Lucy Cooke may have one of the best jobs on the entire planet. She's a documentarian, a sloth documentarian; you've probably seen her work in the happiness-producing "Meet the Sloths," her video about the Aviaros sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica. Animal Planet has realized her talents (and the great po ... More >>

World's Oldest Mattress Found, Free of Bed Bugs

New mattress technology, not inspired by ancient mattress.​Archaeologists in South Africa have discovered what they believe is the world's oldest mattress, and they didn't even find it on Craigslist. National Geographic reports a team of researchers at the Sibudu Cave site came across bedding ... More >>

Free Will Astrology: November 2-8, 2011

Dead Sea Actually Teeming With Life

The Dead Sea is a lie. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute found that the body of water, once thought to be barren, is actually "a fantastic hot spot for life." They discovered this after a series of dive missions last year. National Geographic reports the dive teams discovered craters at the bot ... More >>

Watch Bodega Cats in Their Natural Habitat...Bodegas

Wait, is that a mouse? No, it's just a shoelace. And so it goes, the inner workings of the mind of a bodega cat, as evidenced by this Internets Celebrities video giving NYC's bodega cats the National Geographic treatment. The New York Times is now on this like a cat on a shoelace, asking city dwelle ... More >>

Smörgas Chef Farm Now Has Its Own Smörgas Farm

Blenheim Hill Farm​Although plenty of chefs are turning to urban rooftop farms for their produce these days, the owners of Smörgas Chef have taken things one step further: they've opened their own farm, one that isn't part of the New York City skyline.

Our Dwindling Agricultural Biodiversity

National Geographic via paul.kedrosky.com​Click on chart to enlarge. Not to get all paranoid on you, but we're petrified at this chart, published in the July issue of National Geographic. As calculated by the Rural Advancement Foundation International, it shows how the number of fruit and ve ... More >>

Guess The Extraterrestrial Pop Star!

Katy Perry used "E.T." as the perfect opportunity to dress up in flowy-costumes and to float through space, before falling in love with a nice robot boy before they walk off into the sunset. There're kaleidoscope-effects, Kanye West, and cuts to National Geographic-style clips of animals going at i ... More >>

How to Throw a Party for 7 Billion People

​It's Friday: Let's throw a party for the world's entire population (about 7 billion people). We've made the Facebook invite but spent so much time trying to make it funny (what should the picture be? A cat wearing a party hat? Charlie Sheen?) that we forgot to add a location. How much space w ... More >>

The Sun is 'Waking Up' in a Crappy Mood

Two scoops of pain!​Good news! Our sun is about to enter "solar maximum," the time in its life-cycle when it's at its most active. Wait a second, that's bad news. National Geographic reports that within the next couple of years, massive sun storms will possibly knock out GPS systems, blow up p ... More >>

Here's a Photo of the World's Most 'Typical' Person: Joe Six-Pack is Chinese

via Yahoo!​Have you seen this dude? Probably. According to National Geographic, he's the most typical person in the world. Researchers put together about 190,000 photographs of 28-year-old Han Chinese men (the largest demographic in the world -- hear that, advertisers?) to create this image of ... More >>

It's Kind Of Hard To Be White, Says CNN

​Just as National Geographic informs us that the average person is a 28-year-old Chinese male with no cell phone, CNN inquires, "Are whites racially oppressed?" The answer is obviously "no, stop talking," but the whole article is too credulous, worryingly so, giving a pretty nice platform to s ... More >>

Glenn Close Recounts Humanity's Crimes Against the Planet in Home

NYPD Puff: Counterterror NYC Explains the City's Shiny New Police-State Look

Counterterror NYC: Semi-automatic response​This upcoming Sunday's debut on the NatGeo cable channel of Counterterror NYC, about the annoying NYPD tactic of creating a siege mentality by walking around with big-ass weapons, has sparked an unusually frank preview by the Times. Considering that the c ... More >>

Department of Defense Keen to Harness Powers of Flying Snakes

via National Geographic/Jake Socha​"Normal" snakes are scary enough. Especially when you stumble upon a huge one while you're just milling through, say, an otherwise pleasant Queens park. Or when one suddenly emerges from your toilet. But, snakes that can fly? This is utterly terrifying. Which ... More >>

New Interpol Video! (Warning: Contains Semen-Like White Liquid.)

If you follow a band as slavish to style as Interpol, you've got to expect the quartet to surf art-world tides as effectively and dramatically as their music, well, doesn't. To wit: the move from the stark three-color minimalism of the Antics cover image to the bol ... More >>

Beach, Please: New York Officially Has America's Best Beach

Via National Geographic. Beaches be jealous. Click to enlarge.​It's likely irritating enough for the rest of the country that we think everything here is the greatest thing ever. It must get even more difficult when we know that's the case. Like when they're told by a coastal research professo ... More >>

Dominic McGill's 'FuturePerfect'; Joachim Koester at Greene Naftali; Nicolas Touron's 'The Kingdom'

Plus Cheryl McGinnis Gallery's 'Reconstructing Paper'

Shujaat Husain Khan

Drink it in: National Geographic's Special Water Issue

darkpatator/flickrGulp! We're running out of water.​ With bluefin tuna populations dwindling, bee colonies inexplicably collapsing, and industrial farming threatening the sustainability of our food supply, the last thing you probably want to hear is that we're facing yet another edible (or, in ... More >>

"Most Addictive" Sounds Mostly Jingles, Machine Noises

​Buyology Inc. and Elias Arts conducted a "neuromarketing" experiment, measuring the responses (including pupil dilation and brainwaves) to a number of sounds, seeking to identify the most "addictive" -- that is, capable of creating a response outside of context. The top finisher was "baby g ... More >>

Pat Robertson: Haitian Earthquake Caused by a "Pact To the Devil"

The cataclysmic 7.0 earthquake in Haiti has "flattened" the capital city, Port-Au-Prince, and killed perhaps more than a hundred thousand people*. National Geographic says it's the strongest earthquake in Haiti in 200 years, and caused by the release of seismic stresses on tectonic plates. Above, ... More >>

Free Will Astrology: January 13 through 19, 2010

Endangerment, Be Damned: Giant Tuna Sells for Giant Sum at Japanese Fish Market

National GeographicBluefin tuna: the world's most expensive sashimi.​Environmentalists are telling us that the bluefin tuna population in many parts of the world is more or less screwed, but that hasn't stopped the Japanese from rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Case in point: earlie ... More >>

Giant Lobsters, Courtesy of Climate Change; Does Organic Food Make You a Jerk?

​A new study suggests that people who buy local and organic foods -- i.e., "virtuous shoppers" -- are more likely to be immoral. Specifically, green shoppers were found to be more likely to cheat and steal. [Slate] According to recent research, higher levels of acidity in oceans, which result ... More >>

Free Will Astrology: November 12 through 18

Free Will Astrology: September 24 to 30

STEP ASIDE

Atlantic Avenue gets done up

Tarsem's The Fall: A Singular Spectacle

Just like the "Losing My Religion" video!

Total Denial

Tahini? Hot Sauce? Cockroach?

All Herzog, All the Time

Three-week fest at Film Forum, plus the filmmaker in the flesh

Gimme a Break

Desperately seeking asylum after a night of retreat

Horoscope

On Dangerous Ground

Extreme landscapes engulf eco-warriors in visceral Chinese adventure saga

Rack Focus

Fifteen Minutes

Big in Botswana: Nature mag's webcam cuts closer to framing the same than fame

Eat Human Brains; Run a Zoo

Horoscope

Film

Scan Artists

Horoscope

Far and Away

Might of the Hunter