British Vacation Planner

The Telegraph has a Family Days Out activity planner for all of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland. By using the map and categories such as free, outdoor, heritage, music, food and drink, etc. and narrowing down dates one can see if there are any community actives going on. One can even add an event, too! The results are mapped out on a Google Maps with information and directions given. For all my British and Northern Irish readers this is a must see!

German Heritage Website

Up to twenty-five percent of all Americans have some German heritage in them. Americans with some German in them are the largest immigrant nationality in the United States.

The German government recently launched an initiative to appeal to these Americans. German Originality is a site with heritage information and genealogical links for research. But the main feature of the website is the interactive map (guess which caught my attention first). One can view the various regions of Germany and click on towns for heritage and tourist information. One of Catholicgauze's German branches comes from the town of Hilter (yeah, I miss read that too the first time). While nothing is marked for Hilter the Pied-Piper Story historical event occurred right near by.

Sadly the website is not for those Americans of German descendant who's ancestors came from Austria, Switzerland, or the various "lost lands" of East Prussia, North Tyrol, and elsewhere. For more German heritage research be sure to check out the surname mapper.

Astronomers Map Dark Matter

From CTA.CA

The universe is a funny thing. It only weighs about a tenth of what is suppose to using current models and something interferes with the gravitational systems in many places. So the concept of dark matter and dark energy were born to help us comprehend just what the heck is going on out there. These two things play a big role in our space models aiding in warping galaxies and expanding the universe. However, since we know so little about them they are like the blank spaces on the maps of old. While there were no monsters in those; science fiction ingrained monster, space aliens, time travel, and more live in our imaginations of dark matter.

Astronomers were looking at a star system when they noticed some warping going on. For example one stated "A circular galaxy will become distorted to resemble the shape of a banana if its light passes near a dense region of dark matter." The group decided to map out the weirdness to see if there was any pattern. To their surprise dark matter was clumping in spots which mass was ten trillion (10,000,000,000,000) times the Earth's sun Sol! The matter seems to be there because several galaxies have collided here.

New Map Blog: You Are Here, Hon

The Map Room links to a new blog entitled You Are Here, Hon. The blog is fairly new but it has some good posts (especially the latest ones). Check out this new map blog today!

Earth is Lucky with Life-assisting Plate Tectonics

A new study reveals Earth's size is just big enough to support the Plate Tectonics which assist life. Plate Tectonics allows for the recycling of the planet's crust which keeps carbon dioxide at relatively stable levels. Excess gases constantly "weather" away the new rocks which in turn are replaced by newer rocks.

Historical Geography of High Heels

Oddly Catholicgauze has been subject to numerous women commenting on their distaste of high heels.

The high heel shoe has its roots in ancient times. Depictions from Ancient Egypt show both men and women wearing the style of shoe. However, since art work back then only displayed important events it is unknown whether high heels were for ceremonial purposes only or were part of upper class fashion.

In Europe and parts of "Eurasia" the high heel came and went as the preferred horse riding boot. In the 1400s the French began adopting it as a fashion statement. Men would wear the "court shoe" and a sort of arms race began as everyone tried to have the highest yet most uncomfortable shoe. Future French Queen Catherine de Medici started the fashion craze for women by showing that not only do women look in heels but it also brings them to the height of men.

High heels were popular in Europe and the colonies until the era of revolutions (early to mid 1800s). High heels were associated with the monarchies and conservative ways. Once politics settled done high heels made comebacks in cycles.

Imperialism and the various waves of globalization have brought high heels all over the world. Japanese women would wear high heels before World War II, but only during functions where they dressed as Westerners. Koreans therefore hated high heels (like everything else which was associated with the Japanese); however, the fetish market brought the shoe "through the back door." Today high heels are becoming common almost everywhere. A primary exception is more traditional Muslim countries were there are still taboos against women's beauty in public.

Lord's Prayer Map of Europe

Click to Enlarge

Mount St. Sepulchre features the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary in dozens of languages. It is neat to see it and try to identify linguistic ties between not only European tongues but also the Asian, African, and American ones.

Well, now one can kinda of see the relationships concerning the European langauges. Strange Maps features the above map which shows the start of the Lord's Prayer in the dominant language around 1750.

As usual Strange Maps describes the map in great detail but I will point out some things mentioned in the article and expand a little bit. Note the presence of German in the Baltics. It took World War II to remove the German population but German archeticture and even the German leader of the Russian Orthodox Church remain. Notice the Russian lands. Just look at the wide range of languages which are found across the Steppes. Just like the proto-Catholicgauzes discovered, Russia has proven to be a land where diverse groups of semi-nomads gather and settle.