The blog Strange maps has a map of US states renamed for countries with similar GDPs. It’s meant to help you visualize an important economic index in local national terms. But read literally, it makes familiar geographical surroundings unfamiliar and interesting.
What if New England looked like this—what if any place in the world did?

11. Massachusetts […]

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Don Hebert, creator of the children’s science show Mr. Wizard’s World, died on June 12th..
Mr. Wizard’s World fascinated me as a kid, from the phantasmagorical title sequence on:

The sets looked sanitized but were also comforting—like your grandparents’ house would be if it were sliced into sections and installed on a soundstage, with painted cumulus clouds […]

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As a child I watched a lot of television, especially “Nick at Nite”, the station that played reruns of hit series from the 60s and 70s like The Dick Van Dyke Show. I had a recurring fantasy of being able to take characters out from behind the screen and pile them up in […]

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I live near two highways, and I often walk the streets around them. And on these walks, I often notice the buffer zones between the highways and the neighborhood; those nicely landscaped mini meadows that neither man nor car can enter. Like the painted backdrop on the set of an old prarie TV […]

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