There’s Just Something Hypnotic About Maps.

People Are Using Gps Systems To Find Millions Of Little Hidden Objects Throughout The World - Often As Simple As A Piece Of Tupperware Hidden In The Woods. You Go To A Website, You Get The Latitude And Longitude To Get The Specific Location Of A Certain Specific Hiding Space, And Then You Go There And See If You Can Find It.

Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, A Professor Of Political Science At Rutgers University, Has Argued That Geography Seems Less Relevant Than Ever In A World Where Nonstate Actors -- Malleable Entities Like Ethnicities, For Example -- Are As Powerful And Important As The Ones With Governments And Borders. Where On A Map Can You Point To Al-qaeda? Or Google, Or Wal-mart? Everywhere And Nowhere.

You Live Overseas, You See These Exotic Places And You Want To Know About Them. But, Weirdly, It Also Made Me Homesick For All These Very Prosaic Places In America.

I Would Read The Atlas For Pleasure. I Knew It Was Weird. It Was Weird.

I Can't Relax And Sink Back In The Couch And Watch 'jeopardy!' The Way I Used To.