Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender was always doomed to fail. Not only was the famously ambitious director trying to re-create the mythos of a popular animated series. He was also hoping that “this movie … will be the most culturally diverse tent-pole movie ever released,’’ as he told the Los Angeles Times last summer.

That’s a pretty tall order. And Shyamalan wound up pretty far off the mark.

In fact, the Indian American auteur’s decision to cast Caucasian actors as Asian- and Inuit-inspired heroes launched a protest movement. Fans of the cartoon started Racebending.com, after seeing Paramount’s preference-heavy casting call for actors of “Caucasian or any other ethnicity.” And groups including the Media Action Network for Asian Americans boycotted the film, accusing Hollywood of “whitewashing” Asian projects for the sake of broader audience appeal.

June must be “Hug a Vampire Month.” The fanged folk of True Blood return to HBO’s airwaves on the 13th. And a certain sparkly bloodsucker will lure millions of teenage girls to movie theaters when The Twilight Saga: Eclipse premieres on the 30th.

We at Pop Omnivore do not wish to pander to this Vampire Craze. But we do wish to gain insights into the origins and habits of fangy. And so we interviewed Mark Collins Jenkins, author of the new book from National Geographic: Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend.

In Iron Man 2, the U.S. government and a deliciously deranged industrialist want to get their hands on Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit. I know how they feel. Before Stark descends into a self-pitying stupor of drunkenness, dancing, and watermelon pulverization, he teases us with a long aerial dance. Clad in red-and-gold armor, Stark leaps from the belly of a plane, blasts off, and pirouettes in the night sky somewhere over Flushing, New York.

As alluring as jetting about in rocket boots seems, one question springs to mind: Could the human body take the stress of flying at high speeds in nothing but a formfitting exo-suit? Apparently so, at least when it comes to speed. That boom you hear when a jet breaks the sound barrier—going some 670 mph at 36,000 feet and above? A person inside a hypothetical jet suit would barely hear or feel a thing, says Dik Daso, retired Air Force pilot and curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. What's happening in the air turns out to be very complicated, but suffice to say has to do with pressure waves that move about and somehow spare the speeding human a major rattling.

Things get tricky, however, as soon as you want to turn or move. G forces—the force of acceleration acting upon a body, measured in terms of gravity—kick in as soon as a flying object strays from a straight line. The average person would lose consciousness after sustained exposure to 5 to 6Gs, says Daso. A roller coaster exerts between 2 and 4 Gs; a NASCAR driver on a high-speed track experiences 3 to 4Gs. Pilots who fly F-16 jets, the “Ferrari of fighter planes,” pull turns of 7 to 8Gs and must wear special tube-lined suits that inflate during the maneuver, says Gray Creech, a spokesman for NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. The so-called G-suits press against their legs and abdomen to help stave off blackouts by keeping blood in their heads.

Nor could a flying human be very flexible. “Very small movements at high speeds cause very big changes in flight path,” says Daso. At high speed, a human would have to be so rigid he or she “wouldn’t be able to itch their nose.”

So how Tony Stark manages to stay conscious—let alone work out battle strategies, read computer data and banter with Pepper Potts—while navigating at top speeds is indeed the stuff of superheroes. If one were to attempt to emulate Iron Man, however, the biggest technical problem would be a propulsion system that’s small and powerful enough to zip a person across the sky. If you’re Iron Man’s nemesis Ivan Vanko, a.k.a. Whiplash, all it takes to devise such a system are a few blueprints, a bit of blacksmithing, a large dose of anger and we’re ready to go. In reality, the propulsion needed to fly someone at speeds like Iron Man and his brethren would be too big to strap onto a body, says Daso. Having a hard suit like Iron Man turns out to be very practical in terms of protecting the body from aerodynamic forces. Air pressure would prove uncomfortable on the skin at speeds of 20 to 30 mph; at 300 mph, the wind would start tearing skin apart, says Al Bowers, a project manager at Dryden. “A hard suit would protect you from the wind blast but you’d still be unable to move,” he says. “The suit would have to be flexible and rigid at the same time—flexible for control but rigid so you could withstand aerodynamic forces.”

In other words, only Superman can fly at top speed and still look like Christopher Reeve. James Bond was onto something when he donned a jetpack and blasted up and out of trouble in Thunderball. Iron Man’s suit takes human flight to a whole new level, and if its looks and power weren’t captivating enough, it also folds up into a chic briefcase. If the suit can’t be had, I’ve got my eye on the next best thing: Ivan Vanko’s energy whips.

–Luna Shyr

Or which city is connected to Copenhagen by the Oresund Bridge?

I made my debut as a moderator in a preliminary round of the 2010 National Geographic Bee, which is being televised on PBS stations. I’m a four-decade National Geographic employee, now the managing editor of the magazine, but before that I spent years in the research division, which is responsible for verifying all factual information before publication. You'd think those years of research would make the Bee easy. Yet those questions stumped me. The ability to answer them helped Aadith Moorthy of Florida win the National Geographical Bee and a $25,000 scholarship. The second place winner was Oliver Lucier from Rhode Island. Third place went to Idaho’s Karthik Mouli.

Ten finalists—all boys—competed in the final round of the 22nd Bee. I continue to be amazed, year after year, by how much the geography contestants know, how little attitude they possess, and how casually they appear to accept their elimination if they miss questions, even in the final rounds. Several were here for the second time, having won their state championships twice in a row.

Here’s what I learned as a moderator:

Bee contestants aren’t just geography lovers. Many play musical instruments. Some participate in sports, though not surprisingly they tend to be single-player activities such as tennis and golf. Of course they are also voracious readers.

Pronunciation is hard. I was glad I practiced ahead of time, especially when it came to Sacred Mountains of the World for round 7: Llullaillaco [yoo-yai-YAH-koh], Tehuelche [teh-WHALE-chay] people, Chalkidikí [call-kee-thee-KEE] Peninsula, Ol Doinyo Lengai [ol-doyn-yo len-GAY], and Mount Hikurangi [hee-koo-RANG-ee].

It's not easy emulating Alex Trebek, who hosts the final round of the Bee (as well as a certain other question-answer TV show). I wanted to be as relaxed as Alex is, to call each contestant by name, to express sorrow when an answer was wrong without being too dramatic. I must have succeeded, at least in the mind of one parent, who told me after the contest that my calming voice helped the contestants. I was also told that Alex came into our room several times during the contest, a fact that I'm glad I wasn't aware of at the time.

I wish more girls were there. The diversity of the contestants is inspiring—their families have recent roots in places like India, Iran, Korea, Pakistan, and assorted eastern European nations. Now if we could only find a way to have more girls end up in the finals there would be true diversity. The National Geographic has been trying extremely hard to do this with special studies and outreach, encouraging girls to participate at the local level. But once again the Bee was overwhelmingly male. This year only one of the contestants was female.

And the answers are…Oh, and if you didn’t know the answer to the two questions, they are: Cap-Haïtien and Malmö.

-Lesley Rogers

No sooner had spring arrived when I found out that my short comedy, a modern adaptation about the miracle at the Marriage at Cana, won third place at the annual Off-Centered Film Festival.

The festival is a celebration of indie film and craft beer, hosted by a craft brewery, and I knew little of the latter. I had to find out more about beer than just how to appreciate it, so I bit the bullet, pinched my nose, and dove headfirst into the history of beer. Here's what I found out.

Two days after the premiere of the new HBO series Treme, Lionel Nelson, 60, sits in Sidney's Saloon (1500 St. Bernard Street) watching a rerun of the first episode. Trumpeter Kermit Ruffins appears on screen to the delight and laughter of Sidney's patrons. One of many locals cast in the show, he plays himself. Ruffins owns Sidney's-home to the regulars who used to drink at Joe's Cozy Corner (1532 Ursuline St.), a legendary Treme bar where the Rebirth Brass Band and Ruffins had a standing gig on Sundays.

See our interactive Treme map and continue reading after the jump.

The 21st-century seltzer lover typically buys plastic bottles of the fizzy water at the supermarket. But 50 years ago in cities like New York, customers kept Czechoslovakian, quarter-inch-thick glass bottles in their home, and the seltzer man would stop by to fill you up.

Seltzer Works, a short film by Jessica Edwards, gives us a glimpse into the glorious past of seltzer, beloved by a generation or five of New Yorkers for its intense, throat-clearing bubbliness. Edwards profiles the shop of seltzer-bottler Gomberg, owner of Gomberg Seltzer Works, which dates back to 1953 and is the last independent seltzer operation in New York City.

Even before the 1895 novel by H.G. Wells popularized the term "time machine," writers have been dreaming up contraptions to get people unstuck in time. So the hot tub time machine has plenty of weird company. Here's a rundown of our 15 favorites from around the world.

For the most part, ABC’s Lost has been a show about uncharted territory. In the first season, the passengers of Oceanic flight 815 crash on an island that doesn’t appear on any map — probably because (spoiler alert) it doesn’t seem to stick to any particular patch of sea or historical period. But in the most recent episode, one character wound up in a real place—the Canary Islands. Just in case it’s been a little while since your last geography class, Pop Omnivore is here with some quick facts about the Canaries — and thoughts on how the islands could shed light on the mysterious setting of Lost.

Jude Law stars as one such agent who has a change of heart (literally) after an accident on the job. You know the rest: He goes into hiding, straining his bond with friend and fellow flesh-cutter Forest Whitaker, only to reemerge as an anti-Union rebel. Explosions, mayhem, and a silly amount of gore ensue.

It's hard to resist the beats: chest-rattling, hip-hop meets bhangra. Suddenly you're moving, involuntarily, grinning along with the eight guys on stage. Their instruments weave together, jazzy-smooth but purposeful. An emcee implores "Everybody jump! JUMP!" and you do, with dozens or hundreds or thousands of others, giddily. And then the spine-tingling klezmer sax starts in, and that's when you know you're at a Balkan Beat Box show.

Indeed, Hubble's story definitely has all the elements of a Hollywood epic: high expectations dashed by a crushing blow, a comeback against all odds, a tragic loss, and ultimate success through hard work and camaraderie.

Director Ramin Bahrani, through clever editing and narration, brings great feeling to the crinkly little fellow. This pseudo-documentary goes all the way from the grocery-store "birth" of a plastic bag to its ultimate entombment on the seafloor.

But callooh, callay, what’s this you say? Not familiar with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, flamingo mallets, and ravenlike writing desks? Well, National Geographic is here to help. In 1991 the magazine published a story on Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The author of our story informed me that her lifelong love for Dodgson’s craft and ability to play with words had motivated her to pitch the piece. She retraced the geographic world that inspired the author and his stories, viewed the original manuscript at the British Library, and met with the granddaughter of the Alice. Read Cathy Newman's story. Marvel at Sam Abell's photographs and the wonderfully illustrated story map of Wonderland by William H. Bond. Not only will you get an excellent primer for the adventures and characters you’ll see in the movie, but you’ll also learn that, in fact, 'twas brillig, and the slithy toves did National Geographic in the wabe. Whatever that means.

National Geographic has caught a ride to the Oscars. At least, our yellow border logo did (see it in the car door pouch above?). It makes a fleeting appearance in the Oscar-winning animated short, Logorama. 

The film is a fast-paced, 16-minute thriller set in an extreme corporate landscape where everyone and everything is a logo of some kind. MSN butterflies flutter above Malibu Rum palm trees, while bright yellow AOL figures skate along the sidewalk and a mustachioed Pringles man waits for the Stop & Shop traffic light to change.

But the characters behave in ways you'd never expect. Profane Michelin Man cops banter like Quentin Tarantino's hit men, then chase a crazed Ronald McDonald, who takes a mischievous Big Boy hostage. During the siege, an earthquake hits, sending everyone scurrying.

Naturally, this made me want to learn more about the museum (not to mention the auction results). In all my many visits to London, which began years ago during a summer job at an archaeological dig in Buckinghamshire, I’ve never visited the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. I’ve often walked through the neighborhood, and I once stayed at a hotel just a block away, but I somehow missed this apparently splendid showcase of antiquities.

Dear reader,

You probably aren’t quite sure who will win this overlooked Oscar category. And you probably haven’t seen many (or any) of the nominees. Fortunately, Pop Omnivore can fill in your cultural gap, thanks to the All Roads Film Project, which has presented the films at National Geographic headquarters for the past three years in partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Here at Pop Omnivore, Top Chef gives us lots to discuss. Sustainability? That’s in our wheelhouse. Regional cuisine? We eat that up! So it was with great interest that we followed finalist and pig-lover (note his tattoo) Kevin Gillespie this season as he talked about southern cooking and environmentally-minded eating. The twenty-five-year-old owner and executive chef of Atlanta’s Woodfire Grill spoke to us about those things—and about pork, of course.

The audience explores the lush landscape through the eyes of Jake Scully, a mercenary flying in from an eco-devastated Earth now devoid of everything green. After a journey of five years, nine months, and 22 days, Jake and a troop of jarheads arrive in Pandora to help a soulless intergalactic company claw a rare mineral, unobtainium, from the ground. A glimpse of the strip-mining pit shows what’s at stake. If the company has its way, this alien world will become a hellish dustbowl just like Jake’s home planet.

In Veracruz, Mexico, the sound of the harp is part of the sound of the town. Players pluck a 36-string wooden instrument on street corners, in restaurants, and during Catholic Masses. Known as the Veracruz harp, it came to the New World in the 1500s from Spain. In the 2000s the harp is entering the vocabulary of American popular music. The California-based group Rey Fresco—Spanish for “king cool”—incorporates the assertive Veracruz pluck in its reggae-Caribbean-Latin fusion music.

The group’s harpist is Xocoyotzin Moraza, 28, who grew up in Ventura, California. Xocoyotzin is an Aztec name meaning “first born son,” “extension of a father,” and “something new or fresh.” In Moraza’s case, the definitions are all true. His dad, Antonio, made the harp. And Xocoyotzin is bringing its sound into a new musical environment via Rey Fresco, whose debut album, The People, was released this fall. (Although the name has its downside. “The first day of school was interesting,” says Xocoyotzin, who always had to explain how to say his name: sho-ko-yo-tsen. Maybe that’s why his nickname is Xoco (pronounced sho-ko.)

For starters, the plot is great: When a scapegrace fox runs afoul of three mean farmers, he endangers his family and friends. To save them, he hatches an elaborate plan that relies on interspecies cooperation.

The look and sound of the movie are even greater: Tactile sets and puppets, deadpan voiceovers, and a winsome score let you lose yourself in the quaint, handcrafted world.

But greatest of all—at least to us here at Pop Omnivore—are the assortment of dubious animal “facts” sprinkled throughout the movie. Just for the fun of it, we decided to ask some experts to weigh in on our three favorite whoppers.

Cracked Latin is a band that does—and doesn’t—live up to its name. The sound is Ricky Ricardo’s horn-driven cha-cha-chá meets psychedelic rock—definitely “cracked Latin.” The band members may be a bit offbeat as well, but they aren’t exactly Latin. Luis Accorsi (above, left) is an Italian who grew up in Venezuela and now lives in Buffalo. He performs with Jewish New Yorker Lane Steinberg (right). “Talk about cultural misplacement,” Steinberg jokes.<p>

The video for their song “International Accident” is a case of artistic misplacement. No one is quite sure where it came from. A “crazy Venezuelan friend,” says Steinberg, passed on the animated saga of a chalk-drawn figure who camps out in the wild, strolls along a sidewalk that lights up, and then finds itself hanging for dear life by a finger—images that turn out to be spot-on for a song about strange goings-on in the world today. And for capturing the band’s cracked quality.<p>

Kirshtein, 25, who had to pack his knives and go in this week's episode, is the executive chef at Eno, an Atlanta restaurant whose décor is Euro-farmhouse meets urban chic (meaning big paintings of dice on some walls). In case you’re wondering, we ate: superb barley risotto with truffle oil and fennel fritters, sumptuous moist chicken that married beautifully with an array of wild mushrooms, and … a beet parfait, which had earthy undercurrents of flavor but a texture that seemed a bit gelatinous.

The National Geographic Museum is the latest stop in the world tour of China’s terra-cotta warriors. The silent, life-size sentries were built more than 2,000 years ago to protect the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s throne in the afterlife. Their image projects the grandeur and mystery of ancient China—and clearly resonates in modern-day America. Advance ticket sales topped 90,000. But a visitor to the show won’t see all the terra-cotta warriors.

In China today, these stone soldiers have come to wear quite a few uniforms, and not what you would expect. In the warriors’ hometown of Xian, where I spent a year studying Mandarin, I saw statues recast with playful irreverence by the country’s youth, used as a marketing ploy to appeal to consumers, and displayed as a striking symbol of the “New China.” Clearly, the terra-cotta warriors prove you're never too old for a makeover.

This sometimes silly reinvention is actually part of a serious shift in China, as its leaders seek to shape a modern country capable of supporting 1.3 billion people without losing touch with the lessons of a 5,000-year-old history.

Of course, this would be child's play to Minnesota's Al Franken, who has wowed crowds and won renown with his cartographic renderings. Here's a video of him creating an outline map of the United States at the Minnesota State Fair:

Click to launch our interactive gallery Then grab a pencil and try it yourself.

—Brad Scriber

On movie screens around the country, the world is coming to an end.

Hollywood director Roland Emmerich, of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow notoriety, uses his skill with special effects to depict the end of the world in the new movie 2012.

The 2012 is a reference to the Maya lunar calendar, which allegedly comes to an end on December 21, 2012. Some people think the world will end with it. Maya experts do not agree.

In any case, this is not the first time in recent memory that the end of the world has been said to be nigh. We combed through past headlines to see how print journalism (which is facing its own “end is coming” scenario) announced the imminent demise of our planet. Here are our picks for the outstanding offerings. Let us know if you have any headlines to nominate, old or new.

In an early scene of the film, Army General Hopgood, played by Stephen Lang, attempts to walk through a wall. His effort fails. Big time. What is to blame: Bad teaching or real world physical forces? We asked physicist Jeffrey Hazboun, who studies nature’s fundamental forces at Utah State University, about the physical forces governing walls. Here are three things we learned.

Is it?

The November issue of National Geographic magazine features a moving photograph of chimpanzees watching as one of their own is wheeled to her burial. Since it was published, the picture and story have gone viral, turning up on websites and TV shows and in newspapers around the world. For readers who’d like to know more, here’s what I learned when I interviewed the photographer, Monica Szczupider.

On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.

To find out, we asked the folks at sortprice.com, a price-comparison site that covers merchants who sell Halloween costumes—and that has seen 1.2 million costume searches this month.

Here are the top animal costumes this year. And then for the heck of it, here are seven popular costumes for animals.

10. The number of featured musicians from the video kicking off a 23-date North American tour to promote “peace and community and mindful joy” through music.

6. The number of songs Mark Johnson, co-founder of Playing for Change, the grassroots organization behind the song and tour, listed when asked for his top five songs of all time.

On the eve of the tour I asked Johnson to talk about the group he founded in 2001 and how his effort differs from the time at camp when we all had to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.”

In the movie Amelia, famed aviator Amelia Earhart is depicted as a heroic woman with the adventurous spirit and fearlessness of a ten-year-old. But the nitty-gritty of her flights and her passion for adventure don't get nearly as much attention as her love affairs, ideas of open marriage, or her fame as a celebrity of the ‘30s.

The movie begins in 1937 with the breathtaking face of Earhart (Hilary Swank) sitting in the cockpit of her Electra, navigating her way around the world. It then flashes back to her childhood in Kansas, then forward to 1928, when she meets Mr. Putnam (Richard Gere). Gere asks Swank why she wants to fly, and she responds, “Why does a man ride a horse?” Of course, the answer is “to be free.” I hoped this answer would be the baseline of the film, but Earhart’s freedom is short-lived. Soon she is selling clothing, posing for pictures, and doing commercials for waffle irons.

Amelia, which earned mixed reviews and had a less-than-heroic opening weekend, also neglected to mention one part of Earhart’s extraordinary life: her strong connection with National Geographic. In May 1932  she was awarded the National Geographic Society’s gold medal, presented by President Herbert Hoover (photo, above). And three years later  she contributed an article to the magazine titled “My Flight From Hawaii.” Here are some excerpts that fill in several of the movie gaps and give a bit of insight into what it was like to be a pioneering flyer in the 1930s.

It began with a book. Not a famous book or a best seller but a science textbook, on the shelf of a community library in Malawi—one of 300,000 volumes donated to locations across Africa through the American Institutes for Research. Using Energy, by Professor Mary Atwater of the University of Georgia, had a picture on its cover that captured a 14-year-old William Kamkwanba's imagination, inspiring him to feats of invention. It was the image of a windmill.

In 2002 Kamkwamba had gone to the library in a stubborn attempt to continue his education. A drought had cut his family's food supply so he couldn't afford the fees necessary to enroll in secondary school. He knew little English and couldn't read most of Using Energy. But being the kind of guy who takes apart broken radios and fixes them, he was able to learn a great deal from the illustrations. He was sure he could build his own windmill using scrap from junkyards—an old bicycle frame, PVC pipes for blades. And he did.

To the amazement of fellow residents in the little town of Wimbe, when Kamkwamba hooked his windmill to a dynamo of the sort used to run a bicycle light off a rider's pedaling, his invention generated electricity.

Soon, Kamkwamba built another windmill to pump water from underground. A newspaper noticed. Then a blogger (although Wimbe did not have Internet access, and Kamkwamba had yet to learn the meaning of the world "Google"). Kamkwanba was invited to a TED conference and then himself became the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, written with journalist Bryan Mealer.

Angel the schnauzer strolled to the coffee table, stood up on his back legs, and pushed a nose toward the fruit platter. As dogs are known to do when food is left unattended. But this wasn’t just any dog—and his owner wasn’t just any owner. From across the room a sound rose, crisp and familiar to any fan of the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan. PSSHHT. A hand, tensed into a claw, rose in the air. The dog froze. Again: PSSHHT. (A commanding sound! Grabs attention and shows who's the boss!) Slowly, Angel backed down to the floor, walked away from the table, and curled up silently near his master's feet.

I'm used to folding laundry and bills. But when I was working on "Fold Everything," a short article about innovative uses of origami, my fingers began itching to try the ancient art of paper folding.

After all, there are people creating not only fantastic paper animal sculptures but using the mathematical principles of origami to build foldable telescope lenses and heart stents and to better understand how proteins fold. Origami for art’s sake has also come a long way. The father of 20th century origami, Akira Yoshizawa (1911-2005), created more than 50,000 unique figures. The most modern folders have something Mr. Yoshizawa didn’t: mathematical principals and computer programs that help them transform flat into functional, or just plain phenomenal.

Rivers Cuomo, lead singer for the alt-rock group Weezer, was leafing through the August issue of National Geographic when he found it—the picture he wanted on the cover of the band’s new release, Raditude. The jumping dog was one of the “Your Shot” selections—those are photos submitted by our readers. His name is Sidney and he is a three-year-old mutt whose mom was a Labrador mix.

We spoke with the dog’s owner, 34-year-old Connecticut librarian Jason Neely, about America’s newest canine star. Sadly, Sidney himself was unavailable for comment. “He’s passed out on the floor right now,” Neely said. “We were up in Maine and just picked him up at the boarders. He’s been partying with his doggie friends.”

Here at National Geographic, we always strive to be rational. Yet it never occurred to us to copyright the phrase “Rational Geographic.” And now it’s too late!

Rational Geographic Volume II is the new release from rock musician Michael John Hancock’s group Awesome New Republic. The extended-play album is available free as a download and sold on iTunes and Amazon. We spoke to singer and guitarist Hancock, 27, about the origins of the phrase “Rational Geographic” and about his pop-inflected music, which he describes as sounding as if “the radio is having a panic attack.”

Fort Worth's Star-Telegram ran a story this week about butter. Deep-fried butter, that is. Apparently, it's the next big thing at the Texas state fair this year, and it's on the list of finalists for something called the Big Tex Choice Awards. Judging by last year's champion for Best Taste--chicken fried bacon--it seems like butter's worth betting on. While we wait for the winners to be announced on Monday, we thought we'd take a moment to ponder fried food. 

Fans of True Blood must wait until September 13 for the season finale of the vampire saga. In the meantime, they can get their platelet fix from Thirst, the newest movie from Korean "master of vengeance" Park Chan-wook. Like True Blood, this films goes into overdrive with blood spatter and bedroom scenes, earning its R rating.

The new movie Taking Woodstock tells the story of the classic rock festival through the eyes of Elliot Teichberg, the parent-pecked son of Catskill motel operators. The movie, directed by the great Ang Lee and based on a true story, is okay but a little dull at times and more than a little farfetched (Elliot keeps running into the same high school chum in the crowds of the weekend). Yet the film did make us curious to hear other true stories of the Woodstock weekend. Colleague Kathy Maher, a research editor, was happy to oblige with her memories. Film rights are available.



If we aren’t alone in the universe, how would we treat our intergalactic neighbors?

The new movie District 9 considers this question by envisioning a present-day Earth where humans and extraterrestrials coexist, albeit uneasily.

Two decades after a colossal spacecraft has stalled over Johannesburg, South Africa, its passengers—millions of confused, malnourished aliens called “prawns” by disparaging humans—have been ghettoized into a grimy, apartheid-echoing militarized zone known as District 9. Then an evil corporation called Multi-National United decides to relocate them to an even more bantustan-like tent city. The subsequent eviction process touches on a host of legal and ethical issues like: What would earthlings do to ET visitors? Kill them? Conduct medical experiments? Attempt to extract valuable weaponry? All of the above?

To aid in our speculation, Pop Omnivore talked to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the nonprofit SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and author of the new book Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

 
The good news: Scientists in Ottawa have a plan to deal with a zombie plague. The bad news: Things don't look good for humankind.

The newly published analysis, "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection," (PDF, Adobe Acrobat required to view) concludes that "an outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead."

There's more to this marriage of silver screen and ivory tower than mere whimsy. Lead researcher Robert Smith? (who spells his otherwise common name with a diacritical question mark to help differentiate it) concedes that the world probably doesn't need a literal model of the spread of zombie-ism, but the principles it illustrates are being used to fight monstrous real-world diseases like swine flu and HIV.

Jack Epstein knows chocolates. In his San Francisco store, Chocolate Covered, he sells more than 350 gourmet varieties. Single origin. High cocoa content. Salted. Spiked with chili, bacon, or sake-soaked ginger. Made with goat’s milk or sheep’s milk. And now a brand based on camel’s milk—the only one of its kind in the world.

Epstein has just received his first shipment from the Al Nassma company in Dubai, which launched its confections in the United Arab Emirates last October. As it starts to expand to specialty stores abroad, general manager Martin van Almsick believes it’s on track to become the Godiva of the Middle East.

Food is, of course, a major theme in Julie & Julia, the new movie about Julia Child's life in France and modern-day New Yorker Julie Powell’s attempt to cook every recipe in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

But place also plays a part. The movie begins as the Childs move from Washington, D.C. to Paris in 1949. The city instantly captures Julia's heart (and obviously her appetite). I'm an incurable Francophile, and all I could think about was what life was like in 1950s Paris. How much did Julia pay for the eggs she needed to whip up meringue? Were apartment rents exorbitant? Why, before she made the pivotal decision to attend the Cordon Bleu, did Julia dabble in hat-making?

I turned to the National Geographic archives for answers. This magazine has covered the City of Light at least two dozen times over the last five decades, but one story caught my eye with a title so perfect I had to read it twice: "Home Life in Paris Today, July 1950."

To paraphrase Heidi Klum of Project Runway, in the world of dog breeds, one day you’re in, the next day you’re out. Or vice versa. In the sixth edition of the World Atlas of Dog Breeds, a three-years-in-the-making revision of the original 1989 volume, some canines are added to the mix. Some are still waiting for a spot, like the winsome labradoodle, pictured above. And others, sadly, get an arf wiedersehen.

Heather Russell-Revesz, a senior editor at TFH Publications and one of the book's three primary authors, gave us the rundown on four changes.