Do Halloween like it’s 1920

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

I recently stumbled upon this fantastic vintage Halloween book filled with crafts, decoration ideas, DIY costumes, and more. The book is called Dennison’s Bogie Book for Halloween. It was written in 1920, but the activities and decorations inside can make your 2025 Halloween party a hit.

The book is filled with iconic illustrations demonstrating what the different craft ideas could look like. Some of the activities in the book include making spooky lanterns, decorating containers for party snacks with cute cats and skeletons, and a whole section on Halloween party games to play.

Decoration, costume and party suggestions from 1920 for the night of Halloween, that one time (according to the book) “of all the year when an opportunity is supposed to be given for looking into the future and having one’s fate settled for the coming twelve months”. Full of lots of handicraft tips on making that perfect spooky zone, as well as various party games (mostly involving blindfolds and choosing future loves) and a couple of ghost stories to read when midnight strikes. So.. “Why not invite your friends to a Hallowe’en party and join in the fun of trying some of the time-honored ways of finding out what the future holds in store?”

 

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Book of Demons and Ghosts

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

The Book of Dreams and Ghosts by 19th century Scottish novelist and poet Andrew Lang brings together 78 spooky tales, ranging from a demon encounter in 17th-century England to a 19th century poltergeist haunting in China. Lang  offers commentary on each story, sometimes challenging eyewitness accounts and at other times critiquing the outright dismissal by scientists.

Lang’s interest in ghosts and dreams began early in his life. He explains that he remembers being frightened by vivid images of ghostly figures, inspired by the gothic tales he read as a child. Even as he grew older, Lang never fully accepted or rejected the supernatural. In the preface to The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, he shares his view that ghosts could be hallucinations, or perhaps genuine psychic phenomena. You can read the entire book here.

You may be more familiar with Lang’s extensive series of colorful books about fairies in Britain. He published at least 25 titles between 1889 and 1913.

 

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even though the whole world is burning

Posted on October 12, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

 

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A Show of Hands

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Starting tomorrow foreigners traveling to Europe will have their fingerprints scanned and picture taken when they arrive in 28 EU nations under new regulations. Those who don’t provide such biometric data will be denied entry.

The change comes as the European Union rolls out its new Entry/Exit System for not just Americans but all visitors from outside Europe’s Schengen Area, a group of countries that allows people in the zone to travel across borders freely without going through customs checks.

The new system will be introduced gradually over a roughly six-month period starting Oct. 12. It will eventually replace passport stamps, according to the EU.

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Everybody thinks the world revolves around them

Posted on October 10, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

A 17th-century, Safavid brass, Mecca-Centered World Map, from Persia.

The circular brass base plate with centrally-pivoted rotating brass diametrical rule fixed with removable pin, a glazed circular recess for compass to lower part, the base plate finely engraved and chased with an elliptical grid overlaid with inscriptions in thuluth naming the geographical locations on the grid, vertical and horizontal axis denoting longitude and latitude.

The elliptical grid surrounded by four cartouches filled with fine inscriptions in thuluth on stippled grounds with scrolling tendrils, the border with a series of further inscription-filled cartouches denoting the bearings, applied hinged sundial to upper edge, hinged latitude arc to left hand side, two applied splayed brass feet to upper side of reverse.

 

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Equal Earth

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Most of us were educated to believe in a wildly inaccurate world map. Odds are that you have accepted the standard Mercator projection as the actual map of the world. But it’s completely misleading, making Africa look about the same size as Greenland. In reality, Africa is a 14 times bigger! You could fit the U.S., China, India, Japan, Mexico, and much of Europe inside it and still have room to spare.

Fortunately,  there’s a better map available now: the Equal Earth projection. It gets the sizes right, accurately showing just how big Africa is and presenting continents in shapes that are closer to how they look on a globe.

The Correct the Map campaign challenges the distortion of Africa’s true size on world maps, aiming to empower global understanding and respect for the continent’s significance.

 

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A river runs through it

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

By now you all know that I love a clever map. And, there’s nothing better than a brilliant series of maps with a transit map theme. The map above is a terrific reimagining of North American rivers as a  classic Tube style map. From the author:

This series of river maps is done up in a style inspired by urban transit maps such as those pioneered by Harry Beck in the 1930s for the London Underground. Straight lines, 45-degree angles, simple geometry. The result is more of an abstract network representation than you would find on most maps, and it’s not meant to be taken too seriously — I would not recommend actually transiting through these rivers, as many portions of them are not navigable. But they do, nonetheless, connect us.

If you’d like to know a bit more about how the maps were made, including the many many semi-arbitrary decisions that go in to them, click here.

 

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Europe By Rail

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

The new Chronotrains – Europe Train Map allows you to select any city in Europe and view an animated isochrone layer show you how far you can travel by train over the course of 12 hours. As the timeline plays, the isochrone polygons steadily spread out from your chosen station, illustrating all the destinations you can reach within an ever-increasing travel window.

Of course, the main Chronotrains map is packed with even more useful features. In addition to showing how far you can travel within a chosen time period from any European station, it also lets you explore all the night train departures across Europe, view every direct destination available from a given station, and even access links to book train tickets.

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Nine Billion Names of God

Posted on October 6, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

“The Nine Billion Names of God” is a 1953 science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. The story was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the Nebula Awards.

In a Tibetan lamasery, the monks seek to list all of the names of God. They believe the Universe was created for this purpose, and that once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. Three centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet in which they calculated they could encode all the possible names of God, numbering about 9,000,000,000 (“nine billion”) and each having no more than nine characters. Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, even after eliminating various nonsense combinations, would take another 15,000 years; the monks wish to use modern technology to finish this task in 100 days.[

They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer (and, by extension, its operators) when nothing happens. The Westerners leave slightly earlier than their scheduled departure without warning the monks, so that it will complete its final print run shortly after they leave. On their way to the airfield they pause on the mountain path. Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. Then they notice that “overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

The  short film below by Dominique Filhol was adapted from the original story.

 

If the film fails to open in your browser, please click HERE.

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How to clear your to-be-read pile

Posted on October 5, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

 

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