Do Our Brains Change When We Travel in Outer Space? A book of compiled accounts of astronauts and cosmonauts called The Overview Effect puts forth anecdotal evidence towards that end. The Overview Institute declares it as fact and aims to induce the change in as many people as possible. One space tourist has volunteered to be a human guinea pig in 2009.
posted by Burhanistan on Jun 2, 2008 - 27 comments

Talking to the Taliban is a series of 42 interviews with common Taliban soldiers. [more inside]
posted by Alex404 on Mar 26, 2008 - 11 comments

Plan your trip to a far away spot on the globe. You might wish to walk in a straight line or maybe just take the shortest route (other than, perhaps, digging). Take your camera in case you pass one of these. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo on Feb 6, 2008 - 28 comments

The Map of Humanity [large .jpg] created by illustrator James Turner is an effort to describe the human condition in an incredibly detailed map containing thousands of names from history and fiction arranged in a theoretical geography that encompasses islands of Abandonment and Wisdom and regions of Abomination and Courage.
posted by blahblahblah on Sep 26, 2007 - 39 comments

Get to know the real Mitt Romney. "Every man has a natural, and, in our country, a constitutional right to be a false prophet, as well as a true prophet," said Joseph Smith, and Romney is hedging his bets. Today, the Massachusetts Democratic Party launched a site to help you get better perspective on Mitt.
posted by Mayor Curley on Sep 5, 2007 - 183 comments

Oh, Inverted World. As we’ve all learned in school, 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, only 30% is solid ground. What if everything was reversed? What if every land mass was a body of water, and vice versa?
posted by Ufez Jones on Aug 14, 2007 - 25 comments

"Eternal Sunset continuously tunes into different webcams, chasing the sunset around the globe [...] complementing the increased efficiency and productivity associated with the internet." [via WMMNA]
posted by freebird on Jun 2, 2006 - 16 comments

The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich has some excellent online collections related to maritime history and technology, including telescopes, marine chronometers, sundials, and a whole lot more. Some stuff I've been looking at: John Harrison's chronometers (described in Dava Sobel's book Longitude), polyhedral sundials, and pocket globes.
posted by carter on Mar 15, 2006 - 4 comments

That hole in the backyard would not have gone to China. In fact, most of MeFi's readers would have ended up causing quite a leak. With so many 2d projections out there, who can blame us? There is always this introduction to map projections. You can then make your own projection or your own globe. At least it's not as hard as a 2d spacetime map of the universe (with relativity!).
posted by ontic on Dec 11, 2004 - 18 comments

World Sunlight Map. A neat little map showing the encroaching blob of darkness as parts of the world slip in and out of nighttime.
posted by Salmonberry on Nov 28, 2004 - 33 comments

How on Earth was this image made? Here is an opportunity for you to play image detective. How on Earth was this image made? Is it a painting, or a map? Is it a photograph? If so, was it taken from a high-flying aircraft, or from outer space? Is it a satellite image, or possibly even something else? Click to read the feature article when you’re ready to check your answer. (cheers, lagado)
posted by Ufez Jones on Mar 31, 2003 - 16 comments

The World at Night. This amazing image (warning 500K) is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites over regions of the world at night. You can clearly see the Nile river, Hong Kong, Hawaii and probably, if you look close enough, the town you are in right now. From Astronomy Picture of the Day
posted by lagado on Nov 27, 2000 - 18 comments