n Have you ever seen the constellation named ‘The Tyrants’, spanning the stars Robespierre and Kubla Khan, stringing together Hitler, Mussolini and Attila along the way? Or how about the […]
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n Fixing her regional loyalty in indelible ink on skin, Julia had a map of Portland, ME tattooed on her shoulder. A comparison with the more conventional map on the […]
Now one of the smaller states, it once covered half the continent
In a guest post today, AoE culture correspondent Patrick Riley takes a look at the efforts by James McCartney and other Beatles offspring to escape the celebrity penumbra of their […]
Near where I live in Berkeley, the country’s first four-year Muslim college just started its first semester. Zaytuna College, which for the time being is run out of the American […]
Except for some of the harsh, impermanently inhabited and sparsely visited inlands of Kerguélen, there are no places left on Earth to name. Those with a penchant for baptising should […]
One of the most wonderful things about the emerging global superbrain is that information is overflowing on a scale beyond what we can wrap our heads around.
Genetech is running ads in the NY Times, The New Yorker, and on their Web site that feature patients offering testimonials framed in social progress terms. The campaign is similar […]
Our familiarity with “gerrymandering” comes from the United States revising the boundaries of electoral districts every 10 years, in order to keep up with demographic change.
The only fictional map to feature prominently in the Three Stooges body of work
n n The First World War ( 1914-1918 ) obviously didn’t get that name while it was still raging*, on account of the Second one still being a few decades […]
Big Think today features a new set of interviews with NIH director Francis Collins, perhaps best known as the former director of the Human Genome Project and for his books […]
n They did a lot of crazy stuff in the Sixties, man. Especially at universities like Berkeley, a hotbed of political radicalism, of experiments with free love and cheap drugs (or […]
n There are three Christmas Islands in the world. One is a small community on mainland Nova Scotia (Canada) named after a nearby island, which is presently called Ghost Island […]
Chris Mooney’s Storm World is reviewed in Sunday’s edition of the NY Times, a major moment for any author since the attention will surely give a major boost to the […]
The next Eruptions Word of the Day describes what happens when hot magma and cool sediment get too close.
Many people ask what books on volcanoes should they check out … well, here’s my list of the best general and technical volcano books.
Next week, on Friday April 18, I will be giving a talk at the National Science Foundation, sponsored by the National Capital Area Skeptics. Open to the public and NSF […]
“The burqa is not religious headwear; it is a physical barrier to engagement in public life adopted in a deep spirit of misogyny,” says The Stone column at the New York Times.
Here’s a horrific miscarriage of justice: Tony Simmons, a former counselor in the New York City juvenile justice system, pleaded guilty to raping a handcuffed 15-year-old girl in the elevator […]
Today and tomorrow I’ll hopefully make peace with my curiosity about WikiLeaks and the accusation that it disclosed the names and locations of Afghan informants serving the U.S. and coalition […]
n The proximity to, the ‘otherness’ of and the seemingly eternal conflict with the barbarian tribes across the Rhine stoked Imperial Rome’s interest in all matters German. To get a […]
Who decides what “insane” means? This was the major question of Ken Kesey’s countercultural classic “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which illustrated how mental illness could be deployed by […]
Ironically, the original name for the desert planet is Berber for ‘water springs’
Over the past few years, a growing body of research from the social sciences has pointed to one of the major challenges in communicating about climate change. This research suggests […]
Ever since it achieved unification in 1871, Germany craved colonies as a matter of national pride. But by the late nineteenth century, most of the ‘uncivilised world’ was already carved […]
The secessionist project hit its stride at exactly the worst time possible
There’s a telling moment early on in Alison Chernick’s 2004 film The Jeff Koons Show, now available on DVD from Microcinema. Jeff Koons muses on his idyllic childhood and how […]
While many minorities in our society face discrimination, being gay is a little different, according to GLAAD President Jarret Barrios. “You don’t wear that on your sleeve,” says Barrios. “It’s […]
A beautiful map from the time when symbolic cartography was giving way to the Age of Discovery