Test Your African Geography Knowledge with Statetris: Africa

by Justin Glow on

Okay, we’ve got the original Testris-Geography mashup game called Statetris for the U.S., and then things got a bit tougher (for me) with the follow-up, Statetris: Europe. Now we’ve got new one: Statetris Africa. This one’s a doozy.

Africa is tough! I’m struggling to put countries like Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire in their correct places — and I was a Geography major in school! Problem is, even if you know where these countries are physically located, they may not be facing the correct way in the game. Just like in real Tetris, you’ve got to rotate the falling countries until they’re correctly orientated. [via]

Test Your US Geography Knowledge with Statetris

by Justin Glow on

I ran across this game over at our sister blog Download Squad — it’s called Statetris (States + Tetris = Statetris). It’s just like Tetris, only the colorful blocks that fall from the sky have been replaced with states. This is actually a bit harder than it looks, especially when the East Coast states like New Hampshire and Vermont and Rhode Island start to fall. Plus, the states don’t always fall facing the correct way. Sometimes you have to hit your keyboard’s up arrow to spin it around and make it fit, just like in real Tetris.

Good luck.

Nina Katchadourian: Geographic Art

by Kelly Amabile on

Nina Katchadourian is a multimedia artist who works with video, sound, photography, paper and sculpture forms. One of the subjects that she explores often in her artwork is geography and maps. Take a look at some of the cool stuff she has done: shredded paper maps of actual roadway networks or subway systems; geographic pathologies and moss maps, discovered from actual lichen growing on granite in Finland.

I’m a big fan of the use of maps and travel themes in artistic statements, so I now count myself as one of Katchadourian’s newest fans. This segment of her work portrays visual disordering or dissecting of her surroundings — her own personal spin on geography and the world. A new monograph, All Forms of Attraction, showcases a variety of her work over the years. Her Airplane Family Tree and Paranormal Postcards are other examples of travel-inspired collections:

Be sure to poke around Katchadourian’s cleverly designed website — there’s lots of interesting and inspiring things to see, especially for artsy travel lovin’ folks. Her next public exhibit focuses on another subject dear to my heart — books! What We Keep: An Exhibition on Books and Memory opens August 3 at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Idaho.

National Geographic Society: Museum at Explorers Hall

by Kelly Amabile on

Another cool thing to do at the headquarters of National Geographic is to visit the Museum at Explorers Hall, which offers free admission to a variety of rotating exhibits throughout the year.

Currently showing is Maps: Tools for Adventure, produced by the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in collaboration with National Geographic. It’s a super cool interactive exhibit for explorers of all ages, but of course, kids will especially love it.

The exhibit features a variety of hands-on games and displays all about maps and the people who use them. There are special presentations about mapping basics, how maps are made and how they have been used by different folks throughout the years, like this one about pilot Amelia Earhart:

Other adventurous explorers featured in the exhibit include a wildlife biologist, Hawaiian wayfinder, shipwreck explorer, Egyptian archaeologist and several NASA scientists. Kids have to hit a GPS button to begin each video presentation. And as they move through the different presentations, children and adults learn about the latest mapping technologies and see how the use of maps has evolved from the days of Lewis & Clark to modern time:

There’s a fun companion website to the exhibit, as well as a geographic education awareness website called My Wonderful World that parents, teachers and kids can use to learn even more. The actual Maps exhibit at Explorers Hall runs through the end of July. (It moves on to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry in November.)

Two other exhibits at the National Geographic headquarters — photo presentations on Uganda and Chad — will be on display through September. Be sure to navigate yourself to Explorers Hall sometime soon. All you need is a good map:

National Geographic Society: Library Resources

by Kelly Amabile on

On the first floor of one of the main buildings that make up National Geographic’s Headquarters is an impressive library whose primary purpose is to provide National Geographic staff with the resources and information they need to do their jobs. For example, the team that creates the annual Geography Bee questions uses this library frequently.

What many folks may not know, however, is that members of the public are welcome to make an appointment to visit the library with their own specific research needs. This service could be particularly useful for travel writers looking to access National Geographic’s extensive archives. Or a traveler gearing up for a big trip might enjoy an hour or two of digging through the library’s special guidebooks room. Take a look at this place, packed wall-to-wall with every guidebook imaginable:

There are complete collections of Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Thomas Cook, Insight, Eyewitness, Time Out, Bradt, Odyssey, Fodors, Moon and Rick Steves guides. And I’m sure there are more…this is just what I was able to notice in my few moments thumbing through the colorful shelves:

The NGS Library Collections contain over 50,000 books, 200 journal titles and six million documents, manuscripts and personal papers in the archives. In addition to stacks of books about every corner of the globe, there are sections that cover topics like geology, agricultural economics, sea voyages, costumes, recreation, aeronautics and raising animals.

The staff librarians are very friendly. I spoke to at least five of them in my short visit, and all were very willing to help and answer my questions. Of course, I had to ask them to tell me about some of the most challenging research requests they have ever received — One librarian shared a story about an obscure request she got from some folks at National Geographic Television who were trying to verify the existence of a transgender religious sect in Kashmir. Just a typical day on the job for a NGS librarian!

If you’d like to take advantage of National Geographic’s library resources, there are two things you can do before even making a visit. Be sure to access their online databases to do preliminary research about a topic or location of interest:

Let’s say you are planning a trip to India. You can first search the Publications Index to see which National Geographic magazines, newsletters, books, etc. have made mention of the country. Next, you can search the Library Catalog, to see which resources (published by NGS and others) are actually on the shelves at the library.

As another of the staff librarians explained to me, folks should be able to find many of these resources in their own public libraries, but possibly not as comprehensive or conveniently gathered as the all-in-one collection located at the NGS stacks. Definitely check out the online resources and consider making an appointment to visit if you have a specific travel-related topic to research.