Neat Stuff

Best new atlas yet

Via Spiegel Online: City of Boatmen, France?: Map Reveals the Secrets Behind Place Names. Excerpt:

It is difficult to find anyone these days who is not familiar with Middle Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien's fantastical world of orcs, hobbits and dwarves. A whole generation of film-goers is familiar with such place names like "Dead Marshes" and "Mount Doom."

But this peculiar nomenclature isn't unique to Middle Earth. In fact, such names are everywhere. In France, for example, youl'll find the City of Boatmen. The Caucasus plays host to the Land of the Fire Keepers. And who hasn't dreamed of vacationing in the Land of Calves? But to get to these places, you'll need a new map, which should be hitting bookstores in the Great Land of the Tattooed -- Great Britain -- by the end of the month.

The story contains a photo gallery of map excerpts with place names in English. It's fascinating.

Carbon Footprint Calculator - What's Your Carbon Footprint?

Via The Nature Conservancy: Carbon Footprint Calculator.

The Sky Is Falling

Here's a good article in the June 2008 issue of The Atlantic: The Sky Is Falling. The link also takes you to a video in which the article's author, Gregg Easterbrook, talks about the issue of forestalling an asteroid collision with the earth.

The Phoenix Has Landed

Here's the link to: NASA -
Phoenix.

These are great days that we live in.

Escher's "Relativity" in LEGO®

This is lots of fun: Escher's "Relativity" in LEGO®.

The official M.C. Escher site is here.

Rome Reborn

Now you can visit a digitally reconstructed RomeReborn1.0.

Amazing Views of Saturn

Cassini has been taking some amazing shots of Saturn from angles never seen before, and they're now available on the CICLOPS Public Website.

What's Your Carbon Footprint?

Find out at the BP - Carbon Calculator. Apparently my wife and I are producing about 18 tons of CO2 a year, when the Canadian average is 11.71 tons. Not good!

Mose Allison

When he was a young jazz/blues musician in the 1950s and 60s, he was cool beyond all measure. He still is: Mose Allison is among the great ones.

The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006

Via Bad Astronomy, some astounding photos: The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006. Hard to say which is the best; they're all beyond anything Chesley Bonestell ever imagined.

Bound for Glory: America in Colour, 1939-1943

By all means visit Bound for glory at the Guardian Unlimited. It's a slide show of a dozen colour photographs taken in rural America long ago. It's amazing how colour makes the people and scenes seem vivid and immediate, even when that world has vanished.

And here is the entire collection of colour photos from the Farm Security Administration.

Worldmapper

The University of Sheffield has a great site. Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before shows the nations of the world displayed in proportion to their importance by a given standard—metal imports or exports, for example. Great fun, and literally an eye-opener.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Home

I'm reading Roving Mars, by Stephen Squyres, the Principal Investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It's a fine book, and it made me go looking for information on the Web. Here's the Mars Exploration Rover Mission Home Page. Absolutely amazing stuff—not least the fact that both rovers are still in operation, over two years after arriving on Mars.

Click on the Payson Panorama to see the picture fill your computer screen. Then scroll sideways or down to see the rest of the panorama. It's an experience.

Google Mars

Fascinating: Google Mars.

What time is it?

Here's a very useful site where you can create a personalized clock showing the time in various cities all over the world: timeanddate.com.

Virtual Globes

Declan Butler, a reporter for Nature, has an article on Virtual Globes: The Web-Wide World. If you've discovered Google Earth, you'll find it's more than just a toy.

BasicFeynman.com

If you don't know who Richard P. Feynman was, you're going to have mixed feelings when you learn about him: Scientific genius, raconteur, wit, and safecracker. I've just finished the collected letters edited by his daughter, and that in turn led me to BasicFeynman.com.

Why the mixed feelings? Because he was one of the great figures of the 20th century, you'll fall in love with him, and you'll be mortified that it's taken you this long.

Flying

This is a pretty good way to see how Superman feels as he flies through the sky. Thanks to Tod Maffin's techno blog.

Cassini at Saturn

Here are some amazing and beautiful photos of Cassini at Saturn.

Spirit reaches Martian hilltop

Still moving after all these months, Spirit reaches a Martian hilltop and provides a great view of the landscape—complete with a dust devil. You can also watch a video of Martian dust devils.

More About Planet X

Fascinating: 2003 EL61.

An Ice Lake on Mars

Yet another astronomical surprise: BBC News reports (with a great photo) the discovery of an ice lake on the Red Planet. Great days we live in!

Astronomers detect 10th planet

BBC News Online reports that BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | astronomers have detected a "10th planet"—larger than Pluto, but twice as far away, with a strongly inclined orbit. Like extrasolar planets, we may find a lot more companions in the far reaches of our own solar system. Now we'll have a big controversy over what to name it.

Meet Your Great Big Cousin

A rocky, earthlike planet has been detected circling another star. It's 7.5 times as massive as Earth and twice our diameter, so it's probably not a congenial vacation spot. But it's the smallest extrasolar planet yet discovered, and you can read about it on CNN.com.

How We've Changed!

A new atlas using satellite photos shows how dramatically, and swiftly, the surface of the earth has changed in the past quarter-century or so. You can see some examples in the BBC News feature Changing planet revealed in atlas.

Gulf Stream slowdown?

A recurring issue in the global-warming debate is the possibility of the cooling of northwest Europe if the Gulf Stream slows down or even reverses. Clearing up much of the confusion is RealClimate's recent post on Gulf Stream slowdown.

The post includes a long series of comments and responses. For non-specialists these may be confusing, but read them with patience and you'll learn a lot. RealClimate is a valuable resource.

Andy Goldsworthy

The British artist Andy Goldsworthy makes astonishing work, usually with materials as short-lived as icicles and leaves in a stream. At other times he builds rock walls that snake through a forest, curving around invidual trees. He'll make you look at the natural world through new eyes. The link here is just one of many that display his work.

What a Way to Go

The Guardian Unlimited has a story on ten likely or unlikely ways we might see the human race vanish in the next 70 years or so. Well, maybe...

Happy Anniversary, Dr. Salk!

Tuesday, April 12, is the 50th anniversary of the announcement of the Salk polio vaccine, and the Seattle Times has a story on the significance of the achievement: The shot felt 'round the world.

The vaccine was too late for me—I caught polio in 1948 at the age of seven, but didn't suffer any real damage (well, my mother says I was much nicer before). Nor, knock wood, have I experienced post-polio syndrome.

When I tell people about having polio, they look at me as if I'd survived the original Black Death...a testimony to the enormous success of eradicating polio from most of the world.

Linguistic Map of the US

It's well-known that different regions of any country have their own local words and expressions. Now we have a lovely linguistic map of the US showing the county-by-county usage of different words for soft drinks.

I would love to see more such maps, not only for the US but for Canada and other countries. Can anyone point me in the right direction?