The mystery of Mayotte
In May 2018, something very curious happened. The marine area immediately to the east of Mayotte, the easternmost major island in the Comoros chain, became seismically active.
Bye bye Bourgeois?
Gilles Bourgeois, Ayn Rand’s ultimate disciple, seems to have disappeared from LinkedIn.
Rossel & Co.
When I first began working in the eastern part of Papua New Guinea, I was struck by the quite aggressively English names of the major features of its geography. But then, as our project moved offshore, a French influence began to appear.
The Aves Ridge and the migration of mammals
The leading article in the November 19 issue of Eos was entitled “By Land or Sea: How Did Mammals Get to the Caribbean Islands?” Could gravity maps have anything to tell us about the possibilities?
How to appoint a President
The one saving grace of the Trump onslaught on the US election results is that his preferred medium is still Twitter, which limits him to just a few words at a time. Ayn Rand’s heroes acknowledged no such limitation, but in his 57-page rant against government John Galt still had to acknowledge the need for a government of sorts. How to choose it? A problem he never addressed.
The return of the de Freycinets: a 200th anniversary
On the 10th of November 1820 the three-master Physicienne, formerly the American gun-runner Mercury but recently bought into the French Navy and now commanded by Captain Louis de Freycinet, dropped anchor off Cherbourg. Also on board was his wife Rose, who had just become only the second woman ever to circumnavigate the globe, and was the first to leave behind a journal of her adventures.