The Day the Earth Stood Still

A very interesting concept - what would happen if the earth stood still for a day? Well you get this - dry equatorial regions (including the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) but soggy northern and southern hemispheres of the world. Fascinating that they've worked out that the sea levels would be 1.4km difference.

Charting the Seas in the UK

An interesting report from the UK Marine Monitoring and Assessment community - Charting Progress 2. The overview is worth a quick read esp if, like me, you're just trying to get the essence. The maps in this overview, also at this link.

Lots in here for my oceanographers at work to absorb.

Hydrography in the Thames

Port of London Authority on TV. Check out John Dillon-Leech (he's the Irish one) and colleague explain what they've found here.

Black Sea River

A very interesting story here about a recent discovery of a river under the Black Sea, with 10 times the flow of Europe's largest river the Rhine. Quite incredible.

Une Carte de Paris

Currently on holiday in France which explains my blogging absence (or I think it does). What with run up to holidays, getting ahead with work, packing and other end-of-term etc activities the blogging took a back seat.

Anyway, the other day we were up the Eiffel Tower. I haven't been up it for a few years and very much liked a small feature on the first floor with astro turf, fountains (fantastically good fun in the wind) and the map of the area about the tower.

One of my holiday books, which I've just started, is Map Addict (what a great website ). I'm only a few chapters in but slightly kicking myself that I haven't yet tracked down the Paris Meridian. It took nearly a month in 1884 to reach the decision that Greenwich would host the prime meridian rather than Paris. The Paris meridian goes through the Observatoire de Paris and, from what I can work out from their website, you can only view it on a 120Euro pre-booked visit. Am I missing something? If so then (a) I'll have to start saving now and (b) I'll have to dramatically improve my French to get value for money from my spend.