n n n Every disaster is always bigger than the last one. Newspapers and tv anchors have to say that, don’t they? Otherwise it wouldn’t be news. But those slick-covered […]
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. n n n n n To my admittedly vague recollection, The Streets of San Francisco was a mid-Seventies tv series very appropriately named after its main character. I was too […]
. . . The exemplary specimen of what were labelled, in the early 1980s, the ‘chattering classes’, was Islington Man (*). Both terms described a certain type of city-dwelling British […]
California’s varied landscape has stood in for half the world in Hollywood movies. Here is Paramount Studios’ 1927 map of international filming locations, all set in California.
Not merely a nice flower, but also a political tool
The only fictional map to feature prominently in the Three Stooges body of work
“Paula” is the emblem of the western world’s most populous sub-nation
We’ve discussed the Ancient Greeks’ snowglobe vision of the Universe(#288), tackled the far-out theories of the Hollow Earth (#85), and yet managed to be surprised by the absurdity of the square […]
n “China’s internet is open.” n (PRC government spokesperson responding to a question on Google’s announcement to stop filtering its Chinese search engine, citing concerted hacker attacks on the e-mail […]
Washington DC as a big, red heart, pumping life-blood through the arteries of the nation’s body? Few Americans will view their oft-reviled capital as favourably as this metaphor suggests. However, […]
“I have been seeing this image almost every day for years, but only a few days ago did I realize that it was actually a map,” writes Julien Nègre. It’s […]
Even old New York / Was once New Amsterdam / Why they changed it I can’t say / People just liked it better that way – They Might Be Giants: […]
Is there such a thing as collective guilt? Or if not that, then at least some kind of national responsibility for past state crimes? Was the Nazi period a freak of history, […]
n . n Strange Maps is partial to a nice bit of comparative geography, as demonstrated by earlier posts like #101, #131, #377 or #390. The list is non-exhaustive, and […]
. (click on the map to view it without the annoying sidebar) . Great stories are rarely isolates. Even though Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are founding epics of ancient Greece, […]
n Korea as a tiger: what a beautiful map. The peninsula’s shape is rendered in the image of the local big cat , also known as the Siberian, Manchurian or Altaic tiger (Panthera […]
. . Is spanking an acceptable way of disciplining children? . Opinions differ (1). Some consider it barbaric and a definite no-no, others think it merely old-fashioned but quite handy […]
n . n The Spanish title of Jorge Volpi’s most recent book of essays, translates as Bolivar’s Nightmare – Four untimely essays on Latin America in the 21st century. The […]
. Dell Books, the American series of pulp fiction books, spanned many genres, featured most of all the ‘classic’ detective story. Prominently featured were the maps on the back cover, […]
Marge Simpson probably is the world’s best-known octodactylous (1) housewife. With her distinctive blue beehive hairdo, she is an instantly recognisable fixture on The Simpsons, the animated sitcom now in […]
“This is a scan of the cocktail napkin for The View, the rotating restaurant/cocktail lounge at the top of the Times Square Marriott,” says Liam Flanagan. The 360-degree map on […]
Don’t think of it as the smallest county, but as a huge island.
This satirical exercise in dissuasive cartography painted Ireland as the ‘Emerald Desert’
Sprinkled throughout the city – but often poorly indicated – are dozens of Privately Owned Public Open Spaces
Where we are determines who we are – and what we drink
Did this far-out story of lizards below LA father the conspiracy theory of world-ruling reptilians?
Despite the levelling force of the Revolution, France is still very diverse – often in weird and surprising ways
Despite centuries of Anglo-French tension, Stratford’s favourite son is as popular in Paris as he is in London