This is a fascinating lecture delivered in Australia by Paul Ehrlich, author of the acclaimed book The Population Bomb, and Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University in the United States. It’s a big picture, long view look at how population growth is likely to impact our world. It’s as important a talk as you’ll [...]
Not long ago I had the opportunity to travel across much of the length of Manitoba during an assignment that took me to the far north of the Canadian province. The two-day, 1700 kilometre journey was made aboard “The Hudson Bay” – the train linking Manitoba’s capital of Winnipeg with the idiosyncratic and distant northern [...]
Three questions sum up the fundamental quandary for scientists working in biology and cosmology today. Where did the information that made matter possible come from? How did life arise out of inanimate matter? And what is consciousness? These profound puzzles about the nature of our universe are the major stumbling blocks holding up progress in [...]
For decades a small indie bookstore has been operating, virtually in secret, beneath the corporate hustle of Toronto’s downtown core. “Open Air Books and Maps” is a quirky and clandestine establishment located in a basement-level nook at the corner of Adelaide and Toronto streets. Since 1976, this cramped and largely unannounced subterranean haunt has been [...]
“You can analyze the past but you need to design the future. That is the difference between suffering the future and enjoying it.” – Edward De Bono Psychologist and physician, Dr. Edward De Bono, has devoted much of his life to teaching and promoting the skills of creative thinking. He believes the greatest threat facing [...]
Ahmed Muhiddin Piri Re’is (1475-1544) was an Ottoman mariner and mapmaker whose rise to prominence paralleled the ascending fortunes of the empire he served. In addition to becoming an admiral in the Ottoman navy, Re’is also founded Suleiman the Magnificent’s school of mapmaking. He had a huge talent for drawing charts and he created both [...]
Muhammed “al-Sharif” al-Idrisi (c. 1100-1165) was a major Muslim scholar, geographer and mapmaker of the medieval Islamic period. He was born in the town of Ceuta, in Morocco, and was descended from a line of nobleman who traced their lineage to the Prophet Mohammed. Al-Idrisi took an interest in foreign lands and travel early in [...]
The Mosque of Cordoba is one of the most evocative and simplest constructions in the world. It was built when Islam was a young and fresh religion, and at the leading edge of its times. Its array of columns reverberate against each other like standing mirrors reflecting infinity. Each column is unique and many, like [...]
Travel writing may often entertain and sometimes astonish, but seldom does it take the reader past a constellation of anecdotal experiences into the true essence of a place beyond all preconception. Jason Elliot’s Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran takes aim at the blunting assumptions and false perceptions of this little understood country, slipping [...]
Located off a busy Cairo square, in the bucolic and tree-lined district of Maadi, is a small basement-level office space. At first glance, the room looks no different than most of the dusty and austere apartments that sometimes double for offices in Africa’s largest city. But upon closer inspection, an entire universe spanning eons, unfolds. [...]
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