Thursday, 23 May, 2013

A celebration of the urge to map, from the ancients to GPS, with detours into the male-female map-reading divergence, “X marks the spot,” and the role of maps in war.

Dig the dung beetle. Sample the belly button. Tilt your brain — and see what happens. Watch bees cook their enemies. Drive through the cabbie’s brain. Check out pretty pix of pretty chicks. All weird. All here!

Using at least 20 sources of data, scientists have modeled releases of carbon dioxide from Indianapolis. The new view will help cities map reductions in greenhouse warming, and help people understand that the climate warming problem belongs to everybody.

If you were to draw lines representing your social connections to all your friends, your friends’ friends, and your friends’ friends’ friends, what would it look like? For Jeffrey Heer of the University of California, Berkeley, it looks like a big blue ball of glittery fuzz. In this image, Heer is represented at the center [...]

The essential skills of bird migration are orientation — knowing north from south, and east from west — and navigation, having some sort of “map” to establish the location you’re aiming for, says Stanley Temple, emeritus professor of conservation. Birds usually orient themselves by observing the sun and the stars – although some can also [...]