Source: Big Think
From a young age, Frank was fascinated by maps and atlases, and the stories they contained. Finding his birthplace on the map in the endpapers of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings only increased his interest in the mystery and message of maps.
While pursuing a career in journalism, Frank started a blog called Strange Maps, as a repository for the weird and wonderful cartography he found hidden in books, posing as everyday objects and (of course) floating around the Internet.
“Each map tells a story, but the stories told by your standard atlas for school or reference are limited and literal: they show only the most practical side of the world, its geography and its political divisions. Strange Maps aims to collect and comment on maps that do everything but that – maps that show the world from a different angle”.
A remit that wide allows for a steady, varied diet of maps: Frank has been writing about strange maps since 2006, published a book on the subject in 2009 and joined Big Think in 2010. Readers send in new material daily, and he keeps bumping in to cartography that is delightfully obscure, amazingly beautiful, shockingly partisan, and more.
Not so long ago, we had better maps of Mars than of Antarctica. But in one fell swoop, the South Pole has moved from bottom to top of the class. The world’s southernmost continent now is the world’s best-mapped land mass. And for that, we may thank REMA, the Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica.
“Thanks to satellites, a s***ton of computer power, and a lotta work, we now have a more detailed map of Antarctica than we do of any other continent”, said glaciologist Mike MacFerrin, tweeting as @IceSheetMike; however, “you’ll need 150 TB to download the whole thing.”
REMA, developed by the…
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