Mike of The Food Monkey has joined Bostonist to share his thoughts about cooking, food history, restaurant trends, and any other Epicurean issues. He promises to discuss what tastes good, but not always what is in good taste. For more on consuming the opponents and other food news, go to the Food Monkey website. To contact Mike, go to the Food Monkey's contact page. Two weeks ago I began an experiment. I started the The......

Mike of The Food Monkey has joined Bostonist to share his thoughts about cooking, food history, restaurant trends, and any other Epicurean issues. He promises to discuss what tastes good, but not always what is in good taste. For more, go to the Food Monkey website. To contact Mike, go to the Food Monkey's contact page. In friendly competition, one attempts to best one’s opponent–so long as it doesn’t happen to cause too much of......

PodCamp Boston 2 Friday, October 26 through Sunday, October 28 Boston Convention & Expo Center Free, but registration required Official Site PodCamp Boston 2 promises to teach you more than how to bedazzle an iPod, as witnessed on the reality-show I Love New York 2. The days are packed with practical seminars on creating your own web-media empire. Seminar titles include "Web 2.0 Tools That Are Actually Useful" and "Intellectual Property Law for the Creative......

Like frozen-yogurt chains in the ’80s and bagel shops in the ’90s, cupcake bakeries are sweeping the nation. And, as with many trends, Boston is a little late to the game. But, in September, we finally got our own cupcake joint, Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square. Bostonist went to Kickass to see if the cupcakes really lived up to their purveyor’s name. First we tried vanilla. Ours was a sweet, precious number with baby-pink buttercream......

WGBH's Victory Garden has started its 32nd season with a new host, the beefcakey Australian Jamie Durie. When we heard about the new season and were offered a chance to chat with Durie, we were skeptical because we have neither land nor lawn upon which to garden. But we realized we were being short-sighted. All apartments, dorm rooms, and cubes could use some oxygen and a few natural processes just to freshen things up a......

Welcome to "Series of Tubes," in which Bostonist rounds up developments among local bloggers over the past week. If you want to make sure your blog is on Bostonist's radar, please e-mail caroline@bostonist.com or leave a link in the Contribute section. --David at Blue Mass Group describes the horrible conditions animals must endure at the Wonderland and Raynham dog tracks. His post and the facts described within are more than enough to make a person......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

It's well known that Boston is not known for its fashion…unless fleece and Teva sandals topped off with a Red Sox hat rank high on your list of hot trends. But one man is defying the stereotype. Gary Croteau is Esquire magazine's Best Dressed Real Man in Boston. His stylish threads not only got him into Esquire, but also into the Globe last week, where he received even more accolades for his fine taste. According......

Today was the second installment of the Boston Globe’s weekly Calendar section appearing inside the Sidekick. Last Wednesday we held our breath when we read the short announcement in Sidekick that they would swallow the Calendar – but it didn’t turn out as bad as we thought. The new format requires a reader to actually open the Sidekick to remove the Calendar section. Perhaps this was the goal of the Globe; in the next survey......

Bostonist loves science but does not have the time to read the thousands upon thousands of scientific journals and magazines out there. This is where the Current Science and Technology Podcast proves its worth. A production of the Current Science and Technology Center at the Museum of Science in Boston, helps keep you up-to-date on the latest scientific research, trends, and news. The Current Science and Technology Podcast has covered a wide array of topics......

The Globe tells us this morning us that soon, soon, the T will be fully converted to automated fare cards, a la New York (but hopefully without any crippling strikes). CharlieTicket [sic], as the card is known (the MBTA, ever hip to the latest typographical trends, eschewed the space between two words but preserved the capitalization of the second word), will allow free transfers from bus to subway, T top dog Dan Grabauskas promises, though......

Bostonist truly loves to observe the consumer cycle in America that allows bad fashion trends to resurface every 10 years. Women generally get taken advantage of often in the case of the trends that should never rise again; refer to the metallic and neon colors of 2004, and the hippie-influenced "boho" craze of 2005. But in the case of one particular phase that Bostonist remembers from early high school, grunge, both sexes were serious......

Home for a very brief, and wet, four-game homestand, the Red Sox toed up with the Oakland Athletics before heading off on the last road trip of the season. The Sox dropped two of the games, both of which were painful. Game One showcased another unknown pitcher Boston had never seen before, Joe Blanton, and kept the Boston bats relatively silent and baffled. This continued the trend of seeing the Boston offense fall flat on......