A Wired reporter bemoaning the pizza backwater that is San Francisco rang up Mario Batali to find out why New York Pizza is so magnificent and got an intriguing theory out of the celebrity chef: New York’s old pizza ovens “capture the gestalt of beautifully cooked pizza.” A food development consultant believes Batali’s abstract ‘gestalt’ is, to scientists, vaporized ingredients that become “volatilized particles and attach themselves to the walls of the baking cavity. The......

Above, photograph of Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and Scaled Composites' Burt Rutan in front of a model; below thumbnail is a rendering of the WhiteKnight At the American Museum of Natural History yesterday, British entrepreneur Richard Branson unveiled the aircraft for his Virgin Galactic space travel venture and promised, "2008 is really going to be the year of the spaceship." Scaled Composites (which designed the spaceplane, SpaceShipOne, that had a human-piloted space flight a......

Think you've seen some big cockroaches around here? Apparently there are far superior critters in space! It's being reported that some cockroaches were conceived in space late last year onboard the Russian Foton-M bio satellite and are developing faster than the common terrestrial ones we see scurrying about the city. Some "highlights": Limbs and bodies grow faster Run faster, and are much more energetic and resilient Can give birth several times after one impregnation Thanks,......

Today we looked at Mayor Bloomberg's snacking habits. Was the banisher of trans-fat recently seen with an open bag of Cheez-Its on his desk? We'll likely never know (at least, not until his greasy fingerprint-laden desk set is back from the lab). While we await the results of the faux cheese traces, let's take a look at what some of our commenters had to say: WesTheYeTi calls out the loophole Bloomberg clearly created so he......

Mayor Bloomberg, our city's tireless crusader against vice, whose victory against the artery-clogging forces of trans fat has drawn outrage from bakers and restaurateurs, was recently caught trans-handed in this Wired magazine photo. Or was he? amNY is absolutely one hundred percent certain that’s a Cheez-It in Hizzoner’s right hand (in the Wired photo, not the image here.) If so, it would signify a stunning display of hypocrisy, because each serving of Cheez-Its contains a......

Prefab housing isn't just for the..."thrifty" anymore! Yesterday Wired featured a selection of twelve modular, prefab housing units -- from lofts to place atop city skylines to 60 square-foot cabins with "cathedral ceilings". Today The NY Times reports that the idea has "become fashionable at architecture schools and among an upscale segment of the housing market." As such, MoMA has commissioned five architects to set up their prefab-ulous designs in their vacant lot on......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Nature: Silence of the Bees (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., WNET 13; Wednesday 8:00 p.m., WLIW 21) The long running PBS nature series Nature takes a look at the recent decline in the honey bee population and the possible consequences of it. Masterpiece Theatre: The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WNET 13) The story of a supermarket manager becomes Prime Minister continues with Mrs. Pritchard facing some hard......

Wired is asking if Diesel's latest ad campaign is evil or fun. The ads, which have been out for a few months now, show some major cities underwater as global warming takes over - and global warming chic becomes the latest trend! Wired decides:In their exuberant outlandishness, the ads carve out a little mental space where it's possible for a few seconds to contemplate global warming without thinking about disease, disaster and the possibility that......

Thirty years ago tonight, New York City lost electricity when a Con Ed substation was hit by lightning strikes and a "cascading effect" caused the system to shut down around 9PM. And NYC, as well as parts of Westchester County, were powerless for over a day in the sweltering heart of the summer. Subways were stuck, mobs set fires and stores were looted. It was also the summer that other dramas gripped the city......

The charms of Forest Hills Gardens are no longer a secret: Cottage Living has named it the number one cottage community in the country. The country! Forest Hills Gardens is within Forest Hills, Queens, and it was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., son of the famous landscape designer. The article's author, Justin Martin, lives in Forest Hills Gardens and writes:Olmsted's gift was that he was equal parts landscape architect and social engineer. When planning......

Adam Moss, editor-in-chief of New York magazine may have one of the most dangerous-looking offices in publishing this morning, as it is probably crowded with a number of large sharp-edged and -angled Ellies, or National Magazine Awards. New York was nominated for seven awards and its capture of five of them added an air of upset to the proceedings. MediaBistro's FishbowlNY live-blogged the event last night from Lincoln Center:9:16PM: The magic night for Adam ("I'm......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large theft(?) at Waterview Ct. on Saten Island, a capsized boat in Central Park's lake with passengers in the water (around 74th St. and 5th Ave.), and a shooting on Brooklyn's W 31st St. The Red Hook Ikea is topped out and a Gowanus Lounge reader is there to capture the magic of retail superstructures. Eleven soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division stationed at Fort Drum allegedly broke......

We have some exciting news to share with our readers - Jen Chung, co-founder, editor of Gothamist, and executive editor for all Gothamist sites, has won a Wired Rave Award! The Rave Awards look for people that are "innovators, instigators, and inventors" in their field, with Jen receiving the award for blogs (she's "The Town Crier"). Lest you think Wired hands the award out to anyone, Jen has some pretty good company. Some of......

Wired's science blog tells us that "only two dozen people have seen our planet in its entirety from space" (most have been low orbit views where the entire planet isn't visible). The AP asked them all to describe that view for Earth Day. The first full view of Earth was from Apollo 8 in 1968. Astronaut Bill Anders took the photos during that mission that ended up on posters and pins for the first......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

THEATER: Strings, a new play by Carole Bugge, is loosely based on a real-life train ride in which American physicists Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt and English physicist Neil Turok tweaked the Big Bang theory – and changed it forever. In Bugge’s version, three fictionalized characters – physicist George, his cosmologist wife June and string theorist Rory – spend the trip arguing physics and examining old scars of jealousy and infidelity. En route, the trio is......

This is definitely a case of when best laid New Year's plans go awry. An upstate man is now allowed to sue the Marriott Marquis in Times Square for $750,000. According to the Daily News, Jeffrey Dagen and friends got two rooms at the Marriott to ring in 2005 in the heart of Times Square. However, the Marriott decided to kick out Dagen's party when a woman was found "facedown" in a hallway right......

Today in the Gothamist newsmap: a fatal subway accident near Wall Street, several stabbings, and two bank robberies. Curbed has some more insane renderings from the New York Aquarium design competition. If this ever gets built, we're going to have some very confused fish on our hands. If Al Qaeda ever invades New York City via the Staten Island ferry, we're totally safe. Apparently Hevesi isn't alone in cheating on chauffeur privileges-- the Post......

Wired Magazine's yearly traveling technology shindig, NextFest, plants its roots in NYC this weekend. After starting in San Francisco in 2004 the show finally makes it to NYC. Billed as a WIRED's vision of a new world's fair, here you can "experience more than 130 exhibits from scientists, researchers, and inventors around the globe. WIRED NextFest features innovations in communication, design, entertainment, exploration, health, transportation, security, and green living." We were able to get......

The unveiling of the new buildings - Towers 2, 3, 4 - that will accompany the Freedom Tower at the redeveloped World Trade Center was met with excitement yesterday, proving there's nothing that beautiful computer renderings, a who's who of architects, and a healthy dose of optimism can't do. The NY Times updated its article about the announcement yesterday and also has an article about the pink elephant in the room: How slow progress......

-- Tired: being homeless in Central Park. Wired: camping out in Central Park. -- Sad: a stunningly beautiful model was killed last week when her Newark-bound cab got into an accident. -- Damn, don't you wish you were at the Astoria Pool right now? -- Brooke Astor's son says the accusations against him are "outright lies", and vows revenge. Did you know he was in the CIA? -- In unexpected marketing news, ESPO sells......

- A new building that will house both actors and artists as well as the formerly homeless broke ground in Brooklyn - Quick - Wired just released a bunch of seats for Al Gore's sold out Town Hall appearance on Thursday - The jury gets the Herald Square bomb plot suspect case - ME says girl's hanging death by shower hose was an accident - Curbed has new pictures of Gehry's buildings in Manhattann......

Well, the big day has come and gone, but not without leaving us with some impressive stats (feel free to help us out in the comments with better stats and info!): Number of people who attended: Tens of thousands (our guess) Number of people who won a new Macbook: 15 out of a possible 24 Number of people who didn't: Tens of thousands minus 15 Number of Auctions on eBay selling commemorative t-shirt: Four......

Another dispatch from the center of the world's most overblown real estate bubble: apartments in the soon-to-be-converted Williamsburgh Savings Bank building are going for up to THREE MILLION DOLLARS. What do you get for that price? A fairly long elevator ride and a great view of the north wall of Bruce Ratner's new Nets Stadium project. Hot! As if that news wasn't upsetting enough, the New York Post is reporting that beautiful lobby of......

M.J. Rose, Author, The Delilah Complex, Book Blogger...

After Wired ran a story documenting the GoogleCenter of the United States a bunch of ists jumped on the opportunity to figure out their own middle. Gothamist, Chicagoist, Bostonist and Seattlest all zoomed in on their creamy GoogleCenters. A crack cartography team is hard at work determining the GoogleCenter of the Ist-a-verse as you read this... Austinist read a book about Olympian Bode Miller and liked it. They also took a few pictures of the......

Wired has a story today on the Googlecenter of America-- the place that you find if you zoom in to the closest point on the default Google map (it's a fallow field outside of Coffeyville, Kansas.) This got us thinking: where is the Googlecenter of New York City? Turns out it's the corner of Chambers and Broadway, right behind city hall. That makes some sense to us-- although there are probably better candidates-- Times......

Ron Hogan, Author "The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane"...

A couple of weeks ago, we published a fairly controversial editorial ("Corporate Graffiti Sucks Balls"), calling out the Sony Corporation for dirtying up our city with their PlayStationPortable graffiti advertising campaign. A few days later, Secondary Screening picked up the story-- and their story got Digg'd a few thousand times. Wired noticed, and wrote an article about the controversy yesterday. And of course, our friends over at Wooster Collective have been covering the story......