The 3 million people of the San Diego metro area are served not just by a single airport but by a single runway, making it the 2nd busiest single-runway airport in the world (behind London's Gatwick). But where to put a new one? How about 10 miles out to sea?
posted by FfejL on Oct 24, 2009 - 40 comments

Depending on how permanent Sharpie markers really are, I may have managed to confuse anthropologists years from now, who will surely wonder how it is that hermit crabs on Jabonwod are numbered. — US Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) spends a week alone on an uninhabited island in the Kwajalein atoll.
posted by blasdelf on Oct 14, 2009 - 45 comments

The pitch was extravagent: a man-made archipelago of 300 islands constructed to approximate the land masses of Earth, located 4 kilometers off the coast of Dubai. Claim part of The World for your own, or as an investment. Angelina Jolie And Brad Pitt bought Ethiopia, Tommy Lee bought Greece for ex-wife Pamela Anderson, David Beckham and Rod Stewart were each rumored to have bought an island, joining other celebrities who had purchased part of The World. The environmental impact of World-creation was raised, and Sir Richard Branson warned that the islands would be submerged in 50 years if global governments did not address climate change. The warning in 2007 did not dissuade the developers, and the final rock was placed in the breakwater in January 2008. The end of The World has not been brought about by rising tides, but financial woes have put the development on long-term hold, potentially ending the project. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Oct 2, 2009 - 47 comments

The lost town of Goverthing. On Governor's Island in New York City, a lost hamlet and all of its strange artifacts has been unearthed by Belgian archeological team. (Unfortunately, it's really just an art project.)
posted by fungible on Sep 19, 2009 - 13 comments

The evacuation of the abandoned island of St. Kilda has been commemorated after 79 years. [more inside]
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin on Sep 1, 2009 - 16 comments

Here's a wonderful and visually creative document (complete with a curious and elaborate musical soundtrack and voices of actual barkers) of one full day in the life of Coney Island USA 1952. A fascinating glimpse of a bygone era! See also: Coney Island of the 1940s, and this color amateur film (with some surprisingly arty shots), Springtime at Coney Island 1944.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Apr 13, 2009 - 12 comments

The picture of a boat approaching a wooded island held a strange sway over the early twentieth century imagination. Strindberg closes The Ghost Sonata with the image; Rachmaninoff brought forth a symphonic poem from it; Freud, Lenin, and Clemenceau all owned prints, while Hitler hung one of the original five paintings on his wall. The work's creator, a Swiss Symbolist painter named Arnold Böcklin, never cared to give it a name. It was an art dealer who first called it Die Toteninsel — "The Isle of the Dead."
posted by Iridic on Oct 31, 2008 - 27 comments

Oktapodi is a nice short from Les Gobelins, (last covered here). The 'Making-Of' is fun too.
posted by of strange foe on Sep 13, 2008 - 14 comments

1200 kilometers southwest of Acapulco lies the only atoll in the eastern Pacific: one of France's most isolated overseas possessions. First named for an English pirate/buccaneer/privateer, written about here by one John Harris in 1744, the island has changed hands numerous times: claimed by France as part of Tahiti, claimed by the US under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. The island remained uninhabited until 1906, when a British and Mexican mission began mining guano (still in demand today, though sources can now be found a little closer to home). The atoll was thought to have been polished off entirely by an earthquake rumored to have sunk the islands outright in August of 1909. [more inside]
posted by mdonley on Jun 23, 2008 - 11 comments

New Kiribati "...will future climate change refugees become a new caste of service sector workers inhabiting a sort of Floating Hotel & Duty Free Mall ... ?" Small island states are on the front line.
posted by nthdegx on Jun 19, 2008 - 3 comments

The man who's remaking Coney Island, in his own words. Joe Sitt is a developer "who has spent 20 years trying to lure the nation's top retail chains into inner cities and yuppie downtowns."
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] on May 28, 2008 - 101 comments

Nyanko The Movie 2. I've been thinking about ordering this, but I'm afraid it'd be my own personal Infinite Jest. It's a movie about cats. [more inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Mar 16, 2008 - 18 comments

A mindbending logic puzzle. A thousand people on the island, 900 brown-eyed and 100 blue-eyed; anyone who learns their own eye color must kill themself the next day; a visitor mentions that there is a blue-eyed person on the island; what happens? Nothing, you say, because they already know that? Wrong. Further details at the Terry Tao post linked above, but don't scroll down below the boxed description unless you want hints and/or spoilers. [more inside]
posted by languagehat on Feb 15, 2008 - 390 comments

Andy Strangeway decided to spend a night on each of the 162 Scottish islands. This is his story.
posted by triv on Nov 19, 2007 - 22 comments

Would you like to buy an island? Some are small and affordable. Others, not so much.
posted by dersins on Aug 17, 2007 - 49 comments

The volcano Piton de la Fournaise on the island of Réunion has erupted. Réunion, 800km from Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is technically part of the EU as an overseas département of France. The latest eruption (BBC video, requires Realplayer) of Piton de la Fournaise has resulted in some beautiful photos Top right - Voir le diaporama.
posted by djgh on Apr 7, 2007 - 12 comments

Mont Saint-Michel as a sundial. Previously [via, via]
posted by djgh on Apr 5, 2007 - 9 comments

A yacht crew witnessed the birth of a new island and other strange consequences of volcanic activity in Tonga, and here are pictures they took.
posted by thirteenkiller on Nov 9, 2006 - 45 comments

Your Very Own Nuclear Island Getaway Johnston Atoll, described by J. Maarten Troost in his book The Sex Lives of Cannibals as the "vilest place on earth" is for sale.
posted by thedailygrowl on Jul 24, 2006 - 23 comments

The hydrothermal vents between Easter Island and Juan Fernandez are considered to be the Earth's fastest spreading center at approximately 150km per million years. Not only is this a geological hotspot, but a biological one too where at temperatures of up to 187c and depths of 2200m researchers have discovered amongst other things a blind hairy albino lobster. Ladies, gentlemen and MeFites I present to you Kiwa hirsute (aka The Yeti Crab).
posted by furtive on Mar 8, 2006 - 46 comments

Lost Numbers. I won't get to see any of the second season of Lost until summer 2006 'cause I live in Ireland. I also didn't care enough about the first season to use the "numbers" as my lottery numbers. I should have, they (almost) came up in the National Lottery on November 19. I say almost, instead of 42 it was 24 (sorry Douglas).
posted by Elmore on Dec 16, 2005 - 31 comments

On the Chilean island of Robinson Crusoe, a small GPR-enabled robot named Arturito (google translated page) has apparently just found "The biggest treasure in history..." (estimated at $10 Billion).
posted by numlok on Sep 26, 2005 - 25 comments

Located west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the tropical Island of Nias is renowned for its traditional buildings and archaic stone sculptures. In the 1920's, Danish doctor Agner Møller studied the local culture and language and created a unique collection of art, artefacts and photographs from Nias for the National Museum of Denmark.
posted by breezeway on Apr 18, 2005 - 4 comments

A True Relation, of the Lives and Deaths of the two moft Famous Englifh Pyrats, Purfer, and Clinton who lived in the Reigne of Queene Elizabeth. From Isle of Tortuga, a freecache-linked geocities site. It has a wealth of primary sources and is refreshingly retro to boot! [mi]
posted by mwhybark on Sep 19, 2004 - 3 comments

An Island to Oneself: The Story of Six years on a Desert Island - Tom Neale
posted by hama7 on Apr 20, 2004 - 11 comments

A cyclone has essentially flattened the tiny Pacific island nation of Niue. Although only one of the island's 1200 inhabitants has died, the infrastructure is so battered that the government may simply call it quits, ceding control to New Zealand. Although suffering from sharp population declines over the years, Niue had been one of the most technologically advanced microstates, being the first country to install free Wi-Fi accessible to all of its residents and visitors. And they control the top-level domain .nu - or do they? The recent natural disaster may highlight the fact that the story of the .nu domain is one of economic and legal exploitation. And if Niue folds, can you run a website from a domain attributed to a deleted country? A fascinating sidebar to this fascinating story. (Via /.)
posted by PrinceValium on Jan 12, 2004 - 6 comments

D'you know about the Georgia and Carolinas' sea island culture of the Gullah? Mostly known for their crafts which can fetch a pretty penny, the Gullah way of life (which may be endangered) is an interesting synthesis of American and African culture. They speak a unique dialect of English, which you can hear with Aunt Pearlie-Sue's folktales. Of course, there's the food... check out the recipies for Frogmore Stew and other classic island cuisine.
posted by moonbird on Nov 10, 2003 - 10 comments

Reflect the pain and desolate loneliness inmates felt when serving time - time in a prison surrounded by a paradise that teased them with what was forbidden.

In 1985, before I left Brazil to live in the United States, I journeyed with some friends to surf at Ilha Grande. One day, while we relaxed on a remote beach, a group of military men suddenly appeared looking for some escaped prisoners. They advised us to stay together. Hours later, a helicopter flew over the sea with two fugitives trapped in a net that was hanging from its belly. ...At that moment, a desire was born in me to see life within the Caldron.
posted by thisisdrew on Oct 22, 2003 - 8 comments

The massive engineering feat of Stonehenge meets the conspicuous nature of fiercely gated communities. The resulting bastard child: The Palm, a man made island community shaped like a palm tree off of the coast of Dubai, UAE. (warning: site entirely flash-based) (via willnot)
posted by Ufez Jones on Jul 24, 2003 - 10 comments

Mont St. Michel on the Normandy coast of France is a 12th century gothic abbey purched at the top of a tiny fortified village built around a small mountain; what's most unique about the location is that due to the very gentle incline of the coast, the mountain is located on salt marsh flats at low tide, but becomes an isolated island in the sea at high tide, accessible only by a raised road (added in the 1950s). It's also one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. While there are no shortage of photos of it online, this gallery had some of the most beautiful ones I'd ever seen. For those who can't make it to France, here's a quick guide to recreating the experience in miniature. warning - last link is from geocities, good for first six visitors only
posted by jonson on Jul 21, 2003 - 28 comments

'XIAMEN: A senior Beijing researcher on Taiwan affairs yesterday called for immediate measures to resist an ongoing bid by the island to promote its cultural independence..'. [More]
posted by Kino on Jun 26, 2001 - 11 comments