The London Geographical Journal, the preeminent publication in its field, observed in 1953 that “Fawcett marked the end of an age. One might almost call him the last of the individualist explorers. The day of the aeroplane, the radio, the organized and heavily financed modern expedition had not arrived. With him, it was the heroic story of a man against the forest.” Fawcett was none other than
Percival "Percy" Harrison Fawcett,
British soldier, trained as a surveyor of unknown lands, doubling as a British spy. But
his true love was exploration, and not simply to mark boundaries on a map. His final goal was the same that had been the demise of many explorers:
a mighty lost civilization in South America.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 29, 2011 -
6 comments
The Guardian
recently reported that, according to the 2011 edition of the Times Atlas, a new island called Uunartoq Qeqertaq has emerged off the coast of Greenland due to a 15% loss in glacial cover since 1999. However,
glaciologists were quick to point out that this was deeply improbable. Ejo Schrama, a professor at TU Delft whose research interests include satellite mapping of Greenland, has posted a
copy of a letter subscribed by several scientists at the Scott Polar Research Insititute expressing displeasure/disgruntlement with the publishers of the atlas (the linked post has been continually updated as events have warranted, so keep an eye out). The publishers have issued a
semi-apologetic statement, but why was the mistake made in the first place? ScienceInsider
thinks they might have worked out the answer (see the update in the second half of the article).
posted by Dim Siawns
on Sep 23, 2011 -
31 comments
Jerry's Map: a short film about the fictional world of Jerry Gretzinger, which he has been building for decades through a process of procedural cartography.
His website.
posted by avocet
on Aug 24, 2011 -
20 comments
Over the centuries, the high seas have served as a blank canvas for cartographers’ worst nightmares. They have dotted the oceans with a whole crypto-zoo of island-sized whales, deathly seductive mermaids, giant sea serpents, and many more - a whole panoply of heraldic horrors. As varied as this marine bestiary is, mapmakers have settled on a single, favourite species for land-based beastliness: the octopus. Bonus:
Satire Maps and Fred W. Rose (YT, 3:32);
Fred Rose's Serio-Comic War Map (YT, 1:52).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 15, 2011 -
10 comments
The official Google Earth plugin is one free download that makes all sorts of cool stuff possible in your browser. There's
a full screen version of the program (complete with underwater views and 3D buildings) which can be searched by entering queries at the end of the URL. There's
a framed version with support for layers, historical imagery, day/night cycles, and the Google Sky starmap.
Less useful but more fun are Google's collection of "experiments" demonstrating the possibilities of the Earth API, including
a "Geo Whiz" geography quiz,
an antipode locater,
a 3D first-person view of San Francisco,
a virtual route-follower, and
MONSTER MILKTRUCK!, a crazy fun driving simulator that lets you careen a virtual milk truck through the Googleplex campus, ricochet off the Himalayas, or explore any other place you care to name.
Lots more can be found in the
Google Earth Gallery -- highlights include
a look at mountaintop removal mining,
a real-time flight tracker,
a guide to trails and outdoor recreation,
a 360 panorama catalog,
geotagged Panoramio photos,
and the comprehensive crowdsourced
Google Earth Community Layer.
And while it's too large to view online, don't miss loading
the Metafilter user location map into a desktop version of Google Earth!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 9, 2011 -
15 comments
Res Obscura is a blog by Ben Breen, a graduate student of early modern history, which styles itself "a compendium of obscure things." Indeed, even the asides are full of wonder, such as the one about Boy, the famous Royalist war poodle of the English Civil War, which is but a short addendum to
a post about witches' familiars. Here are some of my favorite posts,
Pirate Surgeon in Panama (and a related
post about 18th Century Jamaica),
vanished civilizations,
asemic pseudo-Arabic and -Hebrew writing in Renaissance art, and a series of posts about the way the Chinese and Japanese understood the world outside Asia in the early modern period (
Europeans as 'Other',
Europeans as 'Other,' Redux and
Early Chinese World Maps).
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 30, 2010 -
16 comments
When he was 32, his life seemed hopeless. He was bankrupt and without a job. He was grief stricken over the death of his first child and he had a wife and a newborn to support. Drinking heavily, he contemplated suicide. Instead, he decided decided that his life was not his to throw away: it belonged to the universe. Buckminster Fuller embarked on "an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity." If the architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist
Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller were still alive, he would be 115 years old today. Though he died in 1983, his legacy grows on through
recordings of his ideas and
the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 12, 2010 -
32 comments
The Atlas of True Names reveals the etymological roots, or original meanings, of the familiar terms on today's maps of the World, Europe, the British Isles and the United States. For example, Britain = Great Land of the Tattooed, New Jersey = New Island of Spears, and Chicago = Stink Onion. There's now an
iPhone app. However, at least one linguistic historian
takes issue with some of their methodology. Mefi's own languagehat
responds.
posted by desjardins
on Jun 17, 2010 -
67 comments
Make a Map is a website that lets you create your own maps of the US and areas thereof using various demographics data. It's still in beta stage but it's got all of the US (at least everywhere I've thought to look) and so far has datasets for median household income, population change 2000-9, population density, median home value, unemployment rate, average household size and median age. It's fun to use and taught me a great deal about my home city. The sitemaker, ESRI, also has a pretty good free globe map software,
ArcGIS Explorer, for which you download
map layers and
add-ins.
posted by Kattullus
on May 2, 2010 -
13 comments
Comic Book Cartography is more than
maps of
make-believe lands. It also covers
cutaways ga-
lore,
robot schematics, and
diagrams of
Batman's utility belt. In the same vein, there was The Marvel Atlas Project (M.A.P.), and though it is now offline,
some pictures have survived. There is also the
two-
part Marvel Atlas, a subset of the
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The
Atlast of the DC Universe is limited to Earth, (sourced from
the DC Heros RPG book and
Secret Files & Origins Guide to the DC Universe 2000), and
Mapping Gotham is a single blog post which collects some maps from Batman's world, as found from a variety of sources.
The Map Room collected a few more, some which
require some
digging into
the archives. [
more,
previously]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 15, 2010 -
28 comments
Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed, ( 1465–1554/5) was an Ottoman-Turkish Admiral, Privateer, Geographer and Cartographer more commonly known as Piri Reis. In 1521 he finished his
Kitab-I Bahriye or Book of Navigation
This is an exquisite C17th - C18th revised and expanded version.
(
scroll down and click the icons which can then be magnified. )
Marvel at the gold leaf and coloring of the map of the
Bay of Salonica
or the wonderful
map of Rhodes.
(
click addittional information button below map to get further information.)
However Piri Reis
is more famously known for this map dated 1513 which is one of the oldest surviving maps to show the Americas. In the
marginalia are the accounts of the pioneer seamen who have taken part in the discovery of the places shown on the map.
Piri Reis at The
Map Room
and
wiki
and
related.
posted by adamvasco
on Nov 27, 2009 -
6 comments
Biblemap.org is an interactive map system for the bible, which is great for visualising where certain biblical events are said to have occured. It's also great for people who don't subscribe to any kind of organised religion but do like looking at maps (like me!).
posted by Effigy2000
on Jun 14, 2009 -
24 comments
Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at
The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jun 4, 2009 -
16 comments
