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Read the latest from our editors and photographers, get photo tips, or comment on the latest issue.
Posted Dec 22,2009
Kevin.7.09

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.

Posted by Marc Silver | Comments (1)
Filed Under: Food, Pop Omnivore, Television
Posted Dec 22,2009

Lion2-455

Majesty alone can’t save them. The world’s top felines—including lions, cheetahs, and leopards—are slipping toward extinction. But an emergency effort to fund on-the-ground conservation projects may help put them back on their feet.

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (5)
Filed Under: Animals, Wide Angle, Wildlife
Posted Dec 20,2009


Writer/director James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, opens with an aerial shot that swoops over an Amazon-like rainforest shrouded in fog. It’s the land of Pandora, a distant moon where the action takes place—and the best thing about this 161-minute, multimillion-dollar, 3D, hi-tech, sci-fi extravaganza. Created in fabulous detail, Pandora is every stargazer’s fantasy, an otherworld that seems strangely familiar yet intriguingly exotic.

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.

Posted by Marc Silver | Comments (1)
Filed Under: Film, Pop Omnivore
Posted Dec 18,2009

CTHEALTH_HealthcareChart_1015_mainimage

Click to enlarge graphic.

The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year. Why the high cost? The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.”  —Michelle Andrews 

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (18)
Filed Under: Health, Wide Angle
Posted Dec 15,2009

Editors-note-455

Four years ago an automobile accident robbed Amanda Kitts of her arm and the ability to do things most of us take for granted, like making a sandwich. “I felt lost,” the teacher from Knoxville, Tennessee, tells writer Josh Fischman in this month’s cover story on bionics.

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (1)
Filed Under: Chris Johns, Editor's Note
Posted Dec 10,2009

RoadsignsWEB
The perfect sign would have no words and be easy to grasp. “The rational thing is to create standard symbols everybody understands,” says David Gibson, author of The Wayfinding Handbook. He’s one of many designers the world over who work toward uniformity and understandability.

Yet the unconventional sign has undeniable allure. Doug Lansky curated “Signspotting,” an exhibit that drew crowds in Stockholm and Edinburgh and is traveling to other cities. In his show and in public places, signs can entertain with overkill  and fanciful images. They also let travelers see the world through another culture’s eyes. One sign instructs squat-toilet users in Western bathroom etiquette. Says Lansky: “Now I understand why I see footprints on the toilet in an international airport.” —Marc Silver

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (2)
Filed Under: Geography, Wide Angle
Posted Dec 10,2009

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.)

Posted by Marc Silver | Comments (4)
Filed Under: Culture, Music, Pop Omnivore
Posted Dec 8,2009

Codex-sinaiticus

A fourth-century Bible that includes the earliest known complete copy of the New Testament now has a 21st-century address: codexsinaiticus.org. For much of its existence, the sacred text—handwritten on parchment in ancient Greek—resided at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, from which it takes its name. As with many old manuscripts, it was eventually split up, and some of it was lost. Only 823 of an estimated 1,487 pages survive.

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (1)
Filed Under: History, Wide Angle
Posted Dec 7,2009


Barking Water, Sterlin Harjo’s understated, powerful film, opens in a hushed hospital ward where Frankie (Richard Ray Whitman) lies in bed, frail and near death. But he’s soon busted loose, eased into a beat-up old Volvo, and driven away by longtime friend and sometime lover Irene (Casey Camp-Horinek). So begins an unusual road trip with two aging American Indians, making their peace as Frankie, “bad sick” but unwilling to fade away in a hospital bed, lives out his final days on the move. Irene has promised to bring him home, driving him across Oklahoma to reunite with his estranged daughter and meet his newborn grandchild while he still has time.

Posted by Marc Silver | Comments (1)
Filed Under: Film, Pop Omnivore
Posted Dec 4,2009


A stop-motion marriage of writer Roald Dahl’s dark humor and director Wes Anderson’s wistful whimsy, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is pretty fantastic.

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.

Posted by Marc Silver | Comments (0)
Filed Under: Animals, Film, Pop Omnivore
Posted Dec 4,2009
CT WILD ants map
The insect version of Roman legions or Mongol raiders, Argentine ants have invaded far corners of the planet, becoming one of the world’s worst pests. Crawling on every continent save Antarctica, they displace native ants, threaten crops, and terrorize homes. And now, contend some researchers, Linepithema humile have formed a global “supercolony”—perhaps the largest insect society ever known.

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (1)
Filed Under: Wide Angle, Wildlife
Posted Dec 4,2009

Couch Sitting

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>

Posted by Marc Silver | Comments (0)
Filed Under: Music, Pop Omnivore
Posted Dec 2,2009
Flu-455
Passengers are screened at a Beirut airport during the swine flu outbreak. Photo by Ramzi Haidar, AFP/Getty Images

Last summer, public health experts warned that 2009 H1N1, aka swine flu, could afflict up to 50 percent of the U.S. population this flu season. To prepare, officials readied 50 million doses of initial vaccines for children, pregnant women, and health care workers. Though not likely, two other, older techniques— isolation and quarantine—could also eventually be considered.

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (0)
Filed Under: Health
Posted Nov 30,2009

Krampus-455

A wild Christmas character is making a devilish comeback. Krampus gets his name from a word for “claw.” That’s apt for a demon said to grab naughty children and stuff them in his sack. Popular in Alpine villages centuries ago, Krampus scared kids straight—his long red tongue upped the fear factor—and taught them that evil bows before good. He served Santa’s forerunner, kindly St. Nicholas, who had “the power to send Krampus back to hell,” says Austrian ethnologist Ulrike Kammerhofer-Aggermann. 

Posted by National Geographic Staff | Comments (5)
Filed Under: Culture, Wide Angle
Posted Nov 24,2009
Solarcooker

If you want to be a designer or art director, master Pictionary. Seriously, play it ALL THE TIME. Even if you don't own the board game, draw stuff on scraps of paper and make your friends guess what it is. That's what I do every day. Ideas have to start somewhere, and for me, the process begins with a fat, black marker.

For example, our November issue featured a page on homemade solar ovens (above). We had the boxes, the glass, the crumpled newspaper. The photographer wanted to know how to shoot them. Sketch, sketch, scribble. Done.

Posted by Oliver | Comments (8)
Filed Under: The Process
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