GeoCurrents’ first radio show!

Dear Readers,
Martin Lewis and I have been interviewed by Professor Robert Harrison on Entitled Opinions, a literary talk show on Stanford University Radio, KZSU.  Topics include: the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages, the first human language (Proto-Human), and what geography and linguistics can teach us about the human past. The podcast of the show (about an hour long) …

GeoCurrents’ Reduced Schedule for Winter and Spring

Dear Readers,
As many of you have probably noticed, GeoCurrents posts have substantially decreased in frequency over the past month. Unfortunately, this reduction in posting will continue for at least the next several months. Asya and I have been convinced that our series on Indo-European linguistics deserves to be expanded and turned into a book, which will take much of our …

“Mismodelling Indo-European Origins” Talk—Video Now Available

Dear Readers,
Martin and I are happy to announce that the video recording of our “Mismodeling Indo-European Origins” talk at Stanford on December 13th, 2012 is now available on YouTube.
Thanks to Gordon Gurley of Stanford Video and to Kevin Morton for producing and posting the video.

Stay tuned for more posts on whether English is a Scandinavian language, when the Roma left …

“Mismodelling Indo-European Origins” Talk

Dear Readers,
Martin and I are happy to report that our talk on Thursday was very well-attended (unfortunately, some people even had to sit on the floor!) and well-received. We had the talk video recorded and we will post the video on this site when its ready. Stay tuned! (Update: Here is the video)
Martin and I would also like to …

GeoCurrents Talk—And Short Vacation

Dear Readers,
GeoCurrents will take a short vacation for the next week or so as Asya and I travel. I will be in Australia until the end of the month, and hence will not be posting. Asya will put up a few posts in the final week of November, but blogging will continue to be light for some time. We will …

Two More Weeks of Indo-European Linguistics

Dear Readers,
We have received a few complaints that GeoCurrents is focusing almost exclusively on a specific controversy in historical linguists, and that as a result it is ignoring other issues of interest and concern. We will readily admit that we been somewhat obsessive of late, as we find this particular issue deeply fascinating and highly significant from an academic perspective—although …

Mapping GeoCurrents Readership

One of the GeoCurrents’ goals is to map the spatial distribution of various aspects of the human condition, but one thing we have not yet mapped is our own readership. This proves to be a difficult task as in many cases we have little way of knowing where they reside.The statistics provided by Google Analytics (see map on the left, …

Mapping Your World Travels – Personalized World Traveler Map Giveaway

Travel is unquestionably one of the best ways to learn geography. Over my 25 years of college teaching, I have no doubt surprised many of my students—and distressed more than a few of their parents—by advising them to travel around the world, or at least to wander aimlessly for a spell in some distant destination, before heading off to graduate …

GeoCurrents’ Summer Initiatives and Revised Description

Dear Readers,
GeoCurrents is pleased to announce the addition of two summer interns, Chris Kremer and Nick Baldo. Chris and Nick will be cataloging the various maps that have appeared on the site and will be contributing occasional GeoNotes and news posts.
Nick Baldo is a native of Westmont, Illinois, who recently completed a BA degree in economics at Stanford. His main …

GeoCurrents ventures into the classroom

Dear Readers,
Starting next week, Martin W. Lewis and I embark on the GeoCurrents‘ first joint teaching venture. We will be co-teaching a course titled “Language, Geography, and Geopolitics” for Stanford’s Continuing Studies program. As the course description below states, we are going to make heavy use of the GeoCurrents site for our teaching, and we will certainly write here on …

GeoCurrents: Next Steps

Dear Readers,
The GeoCurrents series on Siberia is now finished, the various posts in the sequence bundled together for future access. The main section of the website will now take a two-week vacation; the Stanford University academic year is coming to an end, generating a mounting backlog of grading. During this brief period, GeoNotes and news-map posts will continue to appear …

Short News Post Break

Dear Readers,
GeoCurrents news posts will take a one-week spring break.  News posts will resume next week; other GeoCurrents posts will continue without interruption.
As always, feel free to enjoy more news posts using the icons on the map above (full screen here), or using list view.
Martin Lewis

GeoCurrents’ Comments Policy

Shortly after yesterday’s post introduced the new features of GeoCurrents, the site was subjected to a malware attack and had to be taken down for a security fix. Such are the challenges of web-based publishing: constraints are lifted but vulnerability increases. I do wonder whether the strike could have been related to any of a number of people whom we …

New GeoCurrents Look and Features

GeoCurrents was initiated a little more than two years ago as a general forum for geography in the news, illustrating current events with maps and providing geohistorical background. It was also used to showcase interesting maps and items of geographical significance. Since then the blog has undergone several transformations, both conceptual and cosmetic. Individual posts have grown longer and appear …

GeoCurrents Break and Renovation

Dear Readers,
GeoCurrents will be taking an end-of-the-year break; regular postings will resume in the second week of January. During the break, plans will be made for renovating and expanding the site. In January, blog postings will increase from the current two or three per week to four or five per week. New features will also be added, focused on providing …