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Jacob with his black-clad counterpart.Much was revealed in last night’s fifth season finale for Lost, the penultimate for the series. Here’s my take: Apparently Jacob is a Judeo-Christian God-like figure, […]

n n People of a very religious disposition have been known to see the face of Jesus in a slice of burnt toast, or the Virgin Mary’s silhouet in a […]

Science magazine runs the following news report on Gore’s Nobel prize and his impact on the policy debate and public opinion. The article quotes Steve Schneider, Michael Oppenheimer, Robert Watson, […]

n Some maps capture the imagination and inspire so much imitation that they become icons. Harry Beck’s 1930s map of the London Underground is one of the best examples (here […]

The Toscanelli map grossly underestimated the Earth’s circumference (and left out America)

The next Eruptions Word of the Day describes what happens when hot magma and cool sediment get too close.

Released just yesterday, Physics of the Future is my most ambitious book to date. Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists, who are already inventing the […]

Far from simply being a relaxed state, meditation is a period of heightened mental activity. Long-term practice can increase one’s capacity for attention as well as compassion.

nn “I was contemplating the logo and slogan of `The Hospitality Industry`, the vaguely named corporation that apparently makes foil/paper wrappers for hamburgers, wondering just what `Special World` they were […]

n For cartophiles, the main problem with this map is not that interviewer Larry King‘s head covers most of Europe, or that the bulky figure of his guest, moviemaker Michael […]

According to Genesis 4:16 (KJV), “Cain went out from the presence of the LORD and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.” According to this map, […]

Nobody knows why a map of Pinsonia was included in an otherwise accurate atlas

Imaging technology has now been used to assemble the first comprehensive map of global soil moisture that covers all land areas of the world, except for frozen soils at high latitudes and in some mountain regions.

It is a phrase more often heard in London than Washington, but which has driven British defence policy since the end of the Suez crisis in 1956. It is that […]

Let’s face it: The planet is heating up, Earth’s population is expanding at an exponential rate, and the the natural resources vital to our survival are running out faster than […]

A strange return to the age of the dinosaurs

n Well, the jury is in. The country with the most functional geography is… France. As proved by this diagram, France’s jagged, hexagonal shape makes it the ideal, multiple-use household […]

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’, the world is ruled by three superstates. Unfortunately, there’s not much ‘super’ to these states except their size.

Did a volcano in China cause the great Permian extinction? Maybe. Maybe not. We do know that a giant new undersea volcano was found off Indonesia and volcanoes continue to rumble worldwide. UPDATED!

n “Thanks to Unicode and OpenType, modern fonts are overcoming thelimitations of traditional European typography. The size of the countries on this map does not correspond to their geographical area, […]

Scientists predict the Earth will end 5 billion years from now, when the Sun becomes a red giant. Certain religious people are more alarmist, claiming the Apocalypse is just around the corner.

The semi-mythical Greek is not only the father of the epic poem, but also of geography

Part One of Two I often receive e-mails from my fans who state that my ability to popularize science and technology is reminiscent of the late Carl Sagan; This got […]

To coin a phrase by Britain’s pre Second World Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, “It is a faraway country of which we know little”. Chamberlain was of course referring to Czechoslovakia, […]

Will readers have to flounder in an ocean of slush before the new gatekeepers appear to rescue them? It’s getting harder to be a discerning reader in the digital self-publishing era.

97% of Earth’s water is ocean. Without the ocean, Earth would be much like Mars: a bleak, barren, inhospitable place.

n Somewhat in the style of a treasure map, this ‘Map of Online Communities’ shows MySpace, Wikipedia, SecondLife and other user-generated phenomena now populating the internet. n The geography is […]

n How delicious is this: obviously a sister-map to the one in posting #103 (‘EuropeFrom Moscow’), but this time applying an unusual perspective to the Cold War situation in Asia in […]

“Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated”, Mark Twain famously responded after reading his obituary in the New York Journal. To which may now be added “Reports of the […]

On 23 July 1977, this map appeared in Krazy Comic, a short-lived (Oct ’76 – Apr ’78) British comic magazine. Judging by the colours alone, this is pretty much your […]