This might sound a little nuts at first, but hear me out: the Academy needs to add another Acting category. I know, I know: the ceremony is already too long, and actors already get too much attention, and there are entire subsections of film workers not being honored at all.* And certainly I believe that the Academy should recognize the best of everything from trailers to end credits; as “a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures,” it should recognize dedicated professionals in all the different fields that make up movies. Why not recognize the people behind particularly striking title sequences or who make credits that an audience will actually sit through and enjoy? Make it about the entire filmmaking process! Mix it up! Let's stay all night, why not? They're never going to actually bring it back to two hours so let's stop the pretense. But those are all ideas for another time, right now I’m arguing for a third acting category. READ MORE

A little backstory on how snow storm Nemo came to have a name: the practice of naming snow storms came out of the National Weather Service's Buffalo, NY office, where they've been doing it for years as a way of distinguishing between storms. Western New York gets multiple blizzards per year, so you can't just call them "The Blizzard of [Year]"* when there was probably more than one blizzard that year. It's the infamous Lake Effect; cold winds whip across the Midwest, pick up water vapor rising off of the warmer-by-comparison Lake Erie, and dump it as fluffy, snowball-perfect snow as soon as it hits land. Upstate gets so much snow, there's an annual "Golden Snowball" awarded to the city there with the highest snowfall total—so far this year, Syracuse leads Buffalo by 26 inches. READ MORE

It’s the holidays! Time for fun and laughter and parties, parties to which you are expected to bring something or other. Can’t cook? Don’t want to be that guy that shows up with thirty McChickens? Don't have 40 dollars for a set of Laguiole cheese knives for your hostess? Bring a nice holiday beer. And for recommendations, look no further: myself and nine of my favorite lushes got together this weekend and, over fondue and with a backdrop of holiday songs, tasted sixteen of the seasonal offerings. Here we’ve selected the best and shared our tasting notes. READ MORE

The recent "disappearance" of Sandy Island—a long-mapped island in the South Pacific that appears to have never existed—was a fresh reminder that, even with the most modern, state-of-the art, satellites-and-all technology at our disposal, we still may not actually know where everything is. Frankly, we never have—and we've made some pretty awful guesses over the years. READ MORE

Pumpkin beer, like anchovies on pizza or shorts on men, can be a divisive topic: you either like it or you don't. If you don't, well, walk on by—nothing to see here. But if you are, like me, a devotee of the gourd-based brewing arts, you are well aware that not all pumpkin beers are created equal. Which one is the best? More to the point, which one is the best for you? READ MORE

A series about foods we miss and our quests to recreate them. READ MORE

On April 13th of this year, the name Irene was officially retired from the list of Atlantic Basin Hurricane names. In all, six Hurricane Irenes have raged around the Atlantic, but there won't be a seventh. The screenshot here, taken from NOAA’s Historical Hurricane Tracks (a complete timehole of an application) shows all of the past Atlantic Irenes.* Irene 1971 actually hopped across Nicaragua to become a Pacific storm, Hurricane Olivia, something that's happened only a handful of times in recorded meteorological history: Irene-Olivia was the first named storm to do so. Irene 1981 struck France. Then Irene 2011 rolled up the East Coast last summer. Clearly, it was only a matter of time before the name was sent to live on a farm. READ MORE

A series on things to make, eat and imbibe this summer. READ MORE

No one's supposed to get lost these days. Smartphones have maps on them—and compasses, too. But phones have a way of losing their signals when you most need them, and then there are the times you simply can't figure out which street on a crowded map that flipping little blue dot is indicating. And then sometimes your phone dies, and who knew you can't bike through there, and oh god, the left pedal fell off—and suddenly you're meeting your boyfriend's family two hours late and covered in sweat because you took the long way around Arlington Cemetery. Hypothetically. READ MORE

One of the great things about geography is that it sneaks into just about everything, including books. After all, everything happens somewhere, right? When it comes to describing places, though some books stand out because they find particularly unexpected and fascinating ways to describe how the world fits together. Here I've collected eight favorites. Some are more obvious choices than others, but all would fit neatly on the bookshelf of anyone with a flair for the geographic. READ MORE