It always takes 42 minutes

It always takes 42 minutes to travel from one city to any other city on earth, provided you travel through it.

42 minutes is also a near-perfect length for almost any album. Coincidence?

The signs of the Times

Boingboing had a great post about the ads in Times Square today. One of the most interesting things to note is that one of the most prominent and famous buildings, One Times Square (with the Coke and Samsung displays), is a completely empty building above the ground floor. The owner makes so much money off the advertising space, he has no need to make the building habitable for tenants. Advertising space on the building costs $300,000 USD a month. Clearly, the companies advertising on the building (or for that matter, in Times Square in general) have no need to reach a wider audience- who doesn’t know about Coke by now?- they just want to lord over the thousands of people that pass through each day.

We are fucking Coca-Cola, and we bought this screen just because.

The antiquated cartographer

This post’s title just sounds like a Casanova-like, monocle-wearing gentleman- but really it’s about a great site I stumbled upon (via StumbleUpon), simply known as (and I quote only about 1/4 of the shit between the <title> tags):

“Antique Maps, Old maps, Vintage Maps, Antique Atlases, Old Atlases,antique maps, old maps, vintage maps, antique atlases, old atlases, vintage atlases, antique charts, old charts, vintage charts,antique sea charts, old sea charts, vintage sea charts,antique maps of America, antique maps of the world, antique maps of Asia, antique maps of Australia, antique maps of Africa, antique maps of Europe,antique America maps, antique world maps, antique Asia maps, antique Australia maps, antique Africa maps, antique Europe maps,old maps of America, old maps of the world, old maps of Asia, old maps of Australia, old maps of Africa“

Ridiculously self-explanatory, inn’it?

And what’s what, most of them are for sale. However, if you don’t want to drop an undisclosed amount on a flimsy piece of ancient parchment detailed with out-of-date borders and laughable proportions, you can always click-to-see the high-res scans/photos of each map, and download/print at your leisure.

Sunset on Mars

Nasa released the above image as a part of their ongoing Image Of The Day. Sunset on Mars (full size), sent on May 19 by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.

On May 19, 2005, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover’s 489th Martian day, or sol.

Sunset and twilight images are occasionally acquired by the science team to determine how high into the atmosphere the Martian dust extends, and to look for dust or ice clouds. Other images have shown that the twilight glow remains visible, but increasingly fainter, for up to two hours before sunrise or after sunset. The long Martian twilight (compared to Earth’s) is caused by sunlight scattered around to the night side of the planet by abundant high altitude dust. Similar long twilights or extra-colorful sunrises and sunsets sometimes occur on Earth when tiny dust grains that are erupted from powerful volcanoes scatter light high in the atmosphere.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornel

Ya know, I just wish there were larger resolutions.