Interesting Links for 07-08-2017

[andrewducker]

A brief history of quantum alternatives

(tags: quantum history )

Neil Gaiman talks about writers’ humility, bygone bestsellers, memory loss, heroes and being exactly famous enough

(tags: neilgaiman interview )

Government debt per capita for European countries

(tags: debt Europe visualisation )

In Conversation: Trent Reznor

(tags: music interview )

Break the silence on partition and British colonial history – before it’s too late

(tags: India Pakistan history uk )

"I hacked my body for a future that never came" (Well, yet)

(tags: thefuture cyborg Technology )

Tolerance is not a moral precept

(tags: philosophy society morality history )

The Messed Up Mountains of Middle-earth

(tags: geology fantasy Tolkien )

How do you find integer solutions to x/(y + z) + y/(x + z) + z/(x + y) = 4?

(tags: mathematics )

Flesh-eating bugs at the beach: What really ate Sam and why

(tags: ocean meat australia )

Comments

[movingfinger]

I always took the Middle-Earth maps to be schematic in the way that medieval T-O maps of the world are schematic. These were not used for navigation; nautical charts and real-world-based maps coexisted with these. (Orbis terrarum or mappa mundi should land you loads of examples.) Modern fantasy fiction maps generally derive from that type of map, not from reality; they are intentionally stylized.