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One of cartography’s most persistent myths: mapmakers of yore, frustrated by the world beyond their ken, marked the blank spaces on their maps with the legend Here be monsters.  It’s […]

Although Zbigniew Brzezinski “talks in paragraphs, virtually without pause,” according to a recent profile of him in the Financial Times, those paragraphs don’t meander; he gets to the point—fast.  When […]

Among the baker’s dozen of legends obscuring the true origin of the croissant, the one repeated most often transports us back to Austria in 1683. Up before dawn, Vienna’s bakers […]

The Uruguayan capital does not have a metro system - but it does have a metro map

“It’s the economy, stupid!” James Carville crowed throughout the 1992 presidential election, and has pretty much continued crowing since. What do you do when you know it’s the economy that […]

I usually write optimistic posts. This is going to be a scary one. I apologize in advance. While I was in Columbus last month, I mentioned the furnace-like heat. Well, […]

Twentieth-century liberalism lives on in forms of the social contract that are outmoded for the twenty-first century’s globalized, technological world. Liberalism today is entirely reactive, fending off attempts by conservatism […]

Like climate change or poverty, political polarization in the United States may itself be a “wicked” problem, not something we are going to solve or end over the next decade, […]

UPDATE: Steve Jobs famously said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” I wanted […]

To be or not to be Scandinavian, that might be the question soon enough for Scotland, if it decides to become independent. For the time being, Scotland is still a […]

I’m still not sure what Pinterest is for [1], but scrolling a recommended collection of maps on the site, I couldn’t help but notice that the number of cartographic tattoos […]

While America has always led the world in supporting new entrepreneurs and launching innovative new companies, the democratization of the Internet over the past decade means that we are all […]

It has been awhile since the last in my Q&A series, but I think the new Q&A guest will make up for that lapse. Dr. Clive Oppenheimer (top left) has agreed […]

Public opinion about climate change, observes the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin, can be compared to “waves in a shallow pan,” easily tipped with “a lot of sloshing but not […]

Heading to the beach this weekend? Depending on how you travel, you can save money and reduce your carbon footprint, with the help of an innovative new technology company. 

On East German transit maps of Berlin, the city's western enclave was an unmentionable obstacle

Where is the geographical midpoint of Europe? The question is straightforward enough, but the answer isn’t. 

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog] nn I’m working my way through Dr. Richard Florida’s new book, Who’s Your City? Many of you may be familiar with Dr. Florida’s previous books, […]

Metropolis, Illinois, a tiny town with a grand name, is a distant echo of this area's planned greatness

You’ve probably wondered how wildlife filmmakers are able to follow a polar bear and her cub across a year. Or get perfect close-up shots of a bear feasting on a […]

n A gallant piper, stuggling through the bogs,nHis wind bag broken, wearing his clay clogs;nYet, strong of heart, a fitting emblem makesnFor Scotland – land of heroes and of cakes. […]

Suomi-Neito is a distant, but weirdly parallel echo of ‘Paula’, the personification of Brazil’s Sao Paulo state (discussed in #471). Female like most other anthropomorphic representations of geographic entities (1), […]

Forget about the United States of America, forget about Canada and about Mexico. North America might be divided into these three states, but the northern half of the American continent […]

Readers of FRAMING SCIENCE who work in downtown DC or on Capitol Hill may want to take an extended lunch break tomorrow to check out this American Meteorological Society briefing […]

  n “Geographical manuals in US schools show an amputated Brazil, without the Amazon and the Pantanal. This is how students are taught that these are ‘international’ areas, in other […]

We physicists used to laugh whenever we talked about some of the topics that I mention in my book, “Physics of the Impossible”—some of these include such ideas as invisibility […]

Americans under the age of 35 have grown up during an era of ever more certain climate science, increasing news attention, alarming entertainment portrayals, and growing environmental activism, yet on […]

Fronting the NY Times today is a preview of a bold new strategy for engaging hard to reach audiences on science. As the NY Times describes, today’s media event that […]

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature […]