Births of Nations
World | A survey says births aren't just declining in the "rich" world. They're plummeting across east Asia too. China used to average 6.06 children per couple; now, 1.8. Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan,...
View ArticleSpoiled Soil
Environment | A factor behind those recent food-shortage riots: global soil abuse. Human desertification and erosion are helping degrade "an area the size of the United States and Canada combined." Not...
View ArticleSome Call It Junk History
History | You can almost see the steam coming out of historians' ears now: the bestselling author who claimed, to much derision, that Chinese fleets discovered America has a follow-up positing that...
View ArticleThe Global Album Cover Map
Music | Using Google Maps, a music magazine has begun mapping where album cover photographs were taken. You can browse by album title or by clicking markers on the map that pop up album details. Add...
View ArticleThe Soda vs. Pop Map
Language | How do Americans in different parts of the country refer to their fizzy drinks? "Soda," "pop" or "coke"? A 1996 linguistics study (first page here) inspired a map that remains popular on the...
View ArticleThe Trouble With Online Maps
Geography | The president of the British Cartographic Society says Internet mapping (Google Maps etc.) is wiping away the richness of Britain's geography and history. She says "corporate cartographers"...
View ArticleA Personality Map of the U.S.
Geography | New Yorkers are among the most neurotic and crabby people in America while North Dakotans are some of the nicest, according to a "personality map" of the United States compiled by Cambridge...
View ArticleThe Meaning of Main Street
Politics | Main Street is all the rage in politics today (while nobody seems to mention, say, Elm Street, or even M.L.K. Boulevard. Easy Street? Don't even go there.). Sarah Palin says we need more...
View ArticleThe Myth of Small-Town America
Politics | Looking at the stats, a writer disputes Sarah Palin's idyllic vision of small-town America. Rural areas are more prone to teen substance abuse and higher out-of-wedlock birth rates. And four...
View ArticleA New Arctic Crossroads
Geography | A nifty map graphic shows a new waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans being created by Arctic melting "before our eyes." This is "akin in historic significance to the opening of...
View ArticleThe Dangerous Allure of Gold
Economy | Gold's allure is only growing amid global uncertainty, but most of the gold left to mine exists only as traces in remote and fragile corners of the globe, from Mongolia to Brazil. "It's an...
View ArticleForget What You Read About History
History | What if the real story of history was not change but continuity? Not "great men" but terrain and water? A new European history overturns convention by focusing on the underlying forces that...
View ArticleWikipedia's Geographical Blind Spots
Friday | Today's idea: More Wikipedia articles are written about fictional places like Middle Earth than about many countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia, a new map reveals. Behold the "terra...
View Article'The War Against Suburbia'
Monday | Today's idea: The Obama administration's city-focused, environmentalist "war against suburbia" helps explain the Democrats' recent electoral setbacks, a commentator writes. Urban-dense, "smart...
View ArticleBuilding a Better Bunker-Buster
Thursday | Today's idea: The science of aerial bombardment is evolving to try to make bombing campaigns safer for civilians -- and more dangerous for bunkers deep underground. [The Economist]
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