SPACE BALLS

Even if you haven't seen the movie 2001 Space Odyssey you'll probably be aware of the booming drums & the building tension of the epic musical score - many have tried to unravel the mysterious captivation of this sound-scape work, citing it as a clue in Nietzche's world-riddle and even as a hint to the meaning of life itself! Those people may have been smoking too much Pot, but it's also true that we don't understand music entirely either. Perhaps there is a correlation between the patterns of music and the patterns of the universe? Take this animated minimalist map of the celestial bodies of our solar system for example, I'm not saying its going to spawn an evolutionary leap in human existence but it could be a small piece in the puzzle. [By the way, you'll be needing your headphones]

SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER

You'd think that with the entirety of Space at our disposal we wouldn't ever need to worry about polluting our pitiful pocket of the universe. However, with an insatiable appetite for global telecommunications and (sigh) Global Positioning Systems (GPS), we are now piling up so much techno-trash in our orbit that we now ironically require a comprehensive mapping project to save us from our own mapping! ''Mappetite for destruction'' is what I'm calling it, and Space Fence is what the US Air Force is calling their network of ground-based S-band radars that will detect, track and catalog thousands of objects in low-Earth orbit. And if you think its not such a problem at the moment; take a quick look at this Google Earth YouTube visualisation of all the satellites up there right now!

SIMCITY

China has made their own version of Google Maps, and it's called Edushi. It looks like the game SimCity, but it's all real baby! It's also all in Mandarin. Don't be discouraged though - all you need to do, after all, is pan and zoom. Go on, try it out (or some of the other Chinese cities). If you really like this sort of thing (?);  here are a few more wacky artistic SimCity interpretations (they're not interactive maps like Edushi but they're quite fun). Enjoy!

ICE ICE BABY

I once heard a theory about the naming of Iceland (that may or may not be true) that the people who lived on the island didn't want to be invaded by marauding vikings so they perpetuated a rumour that their nice arable island was in fact nothing but ice - so wouldn't you rather attack Greenland? Obviously this was long before the advent of the Internet and especially this enticing map which illustrates the country's capital Reykjavik in such minute detail that it even makes me want to invade - although perhaps just as an amicable tourist.