Bowie World Geography

In the 1930s, seismologists faced a big mystery about the inner structure of the Earth. Today, on what would have been Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann's 127th birthday, it's a good time to appreciate how - using limited data and rudimentary technology - she brilliantly arrived at the answer.

In 2013, just how much did the United States suffer from the government shutdown? Did India's economic slowdown affect its overall security and governance? And did the Arab Spring make any lasting progress toward genuine democracy?

This allows you to see proposed, active and finished (cleaned up) superfund sites around the country. Pretty interesting.

This one was shown this week.

GDELT Global Dashboard Provided through the support of the United States Institute of Peace, this highly experimental prototype dashboard offers an overview of global protests (pink) and conflict (red) across the entire world, as monitored by the GDELT Project, combining a rolling animated map of the past 180 days (visualizing macro-level spatial patterns) with a clickable map of major events monitored over the past 24 hours, updated each morning by 6AM EST.

The interactive map and list includes the name of current president and prime ministers of countries of the World.

Map of all the submarine cables on earth. How the internet gets from place to place.

Since the beginning of this year, the levels of air pollution in Beijing have been dangerously high, with thick clouds of smog chasing people indoors, disrupting air travel, and affecting the health of millions. The past two weeks have been especially bad -- at one point the pollution level measured 40 times recommended safety levels.

Jackson, Wyoming, is an unlikely place for urban farming: At an altitude over a mile high, with snow that can last until May, the growing season is sometimes only a couple of months long. It's also an expensive place to plant a garden, since an average vacant lot can cost well over $1 million.

Short TED talk on the lifesaver bottle. We were passing these out in Afghanistan in 2012-13. Good when you start talking about water scarcity

A look at declining populations and how it affects military and economic readiness. Includes several good maps.

Two centuries ago, Paris, a city with a population of half a million, barely extended beyond its medieval footprint. São Paulo was still largely a small trading outpost for gold and exploration expeditions. And Los Angeles was just a pueblo of a few dozen buildings.

There's a lot of good information and visuals about population and emergent technologies in this letter, and it has a cool layout. Definitely worth reading.

Great tool! Population Pyramid of WORLD in 2010

Unclassified analysis of upcoming challenges facing Saudi Arabia with the expansion of democracy in the Middle East.

Recent article from an Indian Government official describing the lingering effects of the caste system in Indian society.

Some good articles about the spread of Boko Harem to other African countries, financing terrorism with the Internet and use of bit-coins, and a survey of captured Islamist fighters on what motivated them to join militant groups.