Here's a fascinating fact for impressing your friends this evening. At 8 p.m. the earth will be at its furthest distance from the sun for the year. The planet's revolution around the sun is slightly elliptical. Today we're about 94.5 million miles from the sun. Early next January we'll be only 91.5 million miles away (as demonstrated by this awesome graphic). The date of the aphelion has only a slight affect on seasonal temperatures, which......

The skull of a carnivorous Tyrannosaurus dinosaur and the tusk of a mammoth from the Ice Age were sold at auction yesterday. The IM Chait auction was the first the company has had in New York, held in a Manhattan loft on 5th and 29th. While the pieces of history sold for high prices, the final bids were nowhere near as high as the one for the Breakfast at Tiffany's dress, and only a few......

This week the multiplexes seem practically flooded with new releases, in addition to the good things already out, so much so that Gothamist is starting to fall behind on our movie consumption. But never fear, we shall surely rally. Here's a few suggestions to guide your own weekend viewing. To get them out of the way first, there's two sequels coming out that might be worth your time if you fall into a certain demographic......

On May 28th, the new Roland Emmerich film "The Day After Tomorrow" hits theaters, and it's already got NASA and NOAA talking. The film is the story of the new Ice Age. A paleoclimatologist (a scientist who studies the ways weather patterns changed in the past), tries to save the world from the effects of global warming... The plot focusses on New York, but the entire world is experiencing catastrophic hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves,......

Gothamist has been hearing a lot about Jasper Fforde lately, and Newsday has a feature about the British author (whose background includes stints as a film cameraman and living in a family of Oxonians). His books are described thusly: Part mystery, part science fiction, part satire, part lit-crowd entertainment, these hard-to-classify books cross genres with abandon. Consider what Fforde is juggling: Time-travel, newly discovered Shakespeare plays, a machine enabling people to enter classic works of......

Oscar Commentary
Oscar is celebrating its 75th anniversary, I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of watching Oscar....