Sunday, June 03, 2007

Strange Maps

Strange Maps

It screenshotall began with a charting of Pennsylvania's lunatic asylum districts. That might be an inauspicious start elsewhere, but not here. Welcome to the world of strange maps. Since that initial posting in September of last year, the blogger-collector behind this site has rolled out post after post of eccentric and imaginative maps—"the kind you won't find in a regular atlas." From ancient history to alternate history, from the world according to some two-term presidents to the U.S. according to its politics, the maps displayed here are historic, fake, funny, and marvelous. And sometimes all of the above. We paused over the image of Flash Gordon's native Mongo, ate up the charting of North America's "totem food" regions (oh, to live in Corn Bread and BBQ Nation!), and then located ourselves on both the atlas of the country of Houyhnhnms (where Yahoos, those "deformed, debased humans" reside) and the record of the online communities map. Brrr! (in Science & Geography)

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

whiffle ball

Why don't more people invent new sports? ... [more]

Friday, May 04, 2007

Moyers vs media

from Yahoo! Picks

Bill Moyers is on the air again, kicking butt and taking names in his own inimitable fashion. If you haven't seen the new weekly series yet, this PBS companion site will serve as a great introduction. You can watch his recent two-hour documentary on the media's culpability in "buying the war" and perpetuating the myths of Iraqi weapons and a Saddam-al Qaida link. Also catch interviews with "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart and journalist/blogger Josh Marshall. A complete show archive, a blog, a...[the story]

Monday, April 30, 2007

evolution vs politics

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

From Arts & Letters Daily

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution can be linked, some say, to such diverse evils as communism, fascism, and terrorism...

Friday, April 20, 2007

Teaching life lessons in dollars and sense

from CNN.com:

Although college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT test a student's ability to understand algebraic equations, they don't test what many consider the practical side of math: comparing prices, computing interest and balancing checkbooks. [the story]

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

is it biology, chemisty, physics, or philosophy?

from Arts & Letters Daily:

Can biology be reduced to chemistry and physics? And whose problem is it? Does it belong to philosophy or biology?... more

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

why war? no, why peace?

from SciTech daily:

Instead of asking, "Why is there war?", Steven Pinker asks "Why is there peace?" ... [more]

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

how'd they do that?

from SciTech Daily:

Birds in Chernobyl choose to nest in sites with lower levels of background radioactivity, but how they can tell? ... [more]

Friday, March 23, 2007

alternative for video gaming

more thoughts on my video gaming addicted son:

from SciTech Daily:
Why not channel all the time and energy people spend on computer games into useful work to solve large-scale computational problems and thus make computers more intelligent? ... [more]

Saturday, March 17, 2007