This newsletter is an island of delight in an endless sea of online content. I love that regardless of where it starts (Capsizing teenage boys! Clueless, homophobic bigots! MURDER swans!) it never ends up where I think it will, and every step along the way is interesting and funny and informative and joyful.
And your comments are exactly the same as that description you gave there, so THANK YOU for your kindness and thoughtfulness, as always, as always. You're the best, Asha.
Enjoyable throughout, as always. I recently read that researchers have discovered an underwater canyon in the Antarctic Ocean, thanks to deep-diving seals: they fitted over 200 southern elephant seals with trackers, and they did what seals do and dove down into the ocean, deeper than mapping has thus far reached. After the sealscovery, sonar measurements confirmed the existence of a canyon plunging to depths of more than 2km. Wondering how our seal friends can further help map areas we can't see otherwise.....
Holy crap - thank you. Is that in the next newsletter (which I'm doing the links for right now)?
Also, were my mind clearly not fried from (over-)editing, I should have remembered to tag you re. the Zealandia mapping news because I got it from you. Apologies and amended in the Web version!
Yessir! It is, it's just not in the links I sent you. Since you were understandably working on your own, I kept a few links to add myself as my uptime allowed.
I actually had a good history teacher and a bad one when I was at school, and the difference between them was, I reckon, a full grade in the marks I eventually got for History. But, I wish history could be taught the way that someone like Bill Bryson writes books: with an aim of entertaining as much as informing, and with a love of the most absurd and ghoulish details...
I was thinking about getting his book, 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. I'm guessing you've already read it. Since I haven't read any of his books yet, would you recommend this one as a starting point?
If you do, you'll quickly discover my newsletter is nothing but a cheap, plastic copy of that book. That's one of my big inspirations. It's magnificent, and a great place to start, yes!
Thank you, Mike. I just ordered the book. Kindle is great, but I still love the feel of paper in my hands so I'll have to wait a couple of days. In the meantime, I'm also into cheap plastic.
Thanks for your writing. You've started me on a fun journey. (You make a difference!)
Thanks so much, Prue. Yes! The human psychology side of it is as fascinating as the geography/geology side. So much to look at.
I'm also interested in the ideas around island ownership - because it is a dream of so many (including me!) to own their own island, and it's such a problematic dream in so many ways (considering how the ownership of so many islands is based on the uglier sides of human behaviour). But then there's what it does to your mind and your sense of your place in the world when you live on an island - and there's that word "remote", which carries all sorts of judgmental baggage that can annoy the hell out of so many island dwellers, and so on.
So much to write about! (As always.) So - yes, I'll get there.
That's fine, Mike. You have so many good posts that it's no hardship waiting.
I've always been interested in islander mentality because of the huge emotional ties it engenders.
It's well-known in Tasmania, that any Tasmanian who has been part of the diaspora interstate and O/S, inevitably has a longing to return. I call it hiraeth and wrote a Substack post some time ago about its effect on me.
So many of us here choose not to leave, or move here because of the isolation, the lack of big city sophistication, the geographic beauty, the way creative endeavour seems so strong on the island. Why is that? No doubt it's the same on many islands across the globe. Is it that the lack of 'noise' allows creative cells to activate? These are questions perhaps you might choose to address. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
Perhaps Zealandia is a continent akin to Pluto being a planet. The idea of it resonates whilst the physicality of it seems very dissimilar to the others which are allowed to claim the name. One is in the way of becoming. The other already submerged under the sea of science.
Yes, I think that's true - the term "continent" is so evocative, but it's also a thing humans have decided upon, it's human-made (and currently human-argued-over). But the romance of it, a "lost continent" with all its implied borders beyond which things are Very Different Compared To Here, is a powerful thing, and we all very much want to believe in Lost Worlds. I imagine this makes this topic a tricky one for scientists to discuss with media journalists, who know that the phrase "lost continent" holds enormous power to grab attention, and "microcontinent" or some other phrase, however scientifically accurate, is just not going to grab eyeballs and minds in the same way. The whole "PLUTO IS A PLANET AND YOU CANNOT TAKE THIS AWAY FROM US" reaction was so fascinating in this regard - I felt it too, a sense of mild outrage that I couldn't pin down or rationalise away. We want our mysteries, and sometimes specific words are where they're held in our language.
Surely India careering into Eurasia and thereby producing Mount Everest et al cannot warrant it being called a separate landmass? Is a separate landmass not separate? Like, not attached? Like, not pushing up cheek by jowl with Annapurna III?
(I like become, but I'm not sure about whence).
(Where does North America stop and South America begin?)
Thank you so much for reading, Pamela. Me too! This newsletter is just an excuse for pretending I'm back at school (except without the worst of the teachers I had)...
A brilliant post, Mike. Savage Yorkshire swans and all (they're friendlier in Devon). Now I have a question for you: I've lived on 5 continents (giving Antartica and the new one a miss). In your expert opinion, does that make me an example of continental drift?
Well, I think that makes you supremely qualified to write about everywhere. What a life! But also: you're only three continents away from having completely conquered the part of this planet that's above sea level. The competitive Risk player in me wants to know what you're going to do about this. How long do you have to dwell in a place for it to count as having "lived" there? And - how good are your postman skills? https://www.timeout.com/news/bizarre-job-alert-you-could-run-the-worlds-most-remote-post-office-in-antarctica-040522
Thanks, Mike. Maybe they'll have better postal services in Antarctica than the UK before long?
As for how long it takes to be in a place before you're living in it, I almost prefer to leave that to the philosophers among us. That should keep them happy for a while. It's usually been a matter of years for me, but I was in Catalonia for a couple of months once, and as I was working there, I felt I was living there.
Thank you for this humorous instruction on the continents. So much has changed since I was a schoolgirl learning about the "seven" continents. Now that I'm preparing to homeschool my grandson, you've helped me learn what I perhaps should teach him ... until of course that nomenclature and lines all change again.
If you teach him that absolutely everything in the sciences, including the continents, are still being investigated and you *never know* what future work might uncover, I reckon that's the best and truest kind of science education anyone can get.
Thanks, Michael! Since your newsletter proudly proclaims you are Going Places and I'm taking that as a brand promise that you will pursue a travel story to its very end, I accept your kind offer of help: please explore Zealandia and report back.
For around 94% of your 1,900,000 square mile journey, you're going to need Scuba gear or some kind of submersible. And possibly James Cameron.
But if you wanted to cheat - which would be disappointing, but I guess practical - then you're going to have to visit:
- New Zealand (North Island, South Island, Chatham Islands, New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, the Solander Islands, the Three Kings Islands
- New Caledonia and the islands surrounding it
- Lord Howe Island Group (New South Wales)
- Norfolk Island
- the Cato, Elizabeth, and Middleton reefs (Coral Sea Islands Territory).
This is a substantial undertaking, probably decades of grim, thankless work with long hours and enormous expense, so I wish you luck! I admire your commitment to your work and hope it goes well.
As usual Mr S, you have boggled my world. I only wish that my ageing memory was up to the task of retaining more than a fraction of the gems you dig up for our edification.
I love how definitions change over time. You can see this sort of... problem? most prevalently in the conversations around artificial intelligence. "Is it thinking?" "When will AI be conscious/sentient/whatever?" Of course, nobody can agree on a definition of any of those words like "thinking" or "conscious" or what have you.
As a kid, I could never understand why Eurasia isn't really a continent all to itself.
Yes - it's a reminder that we invent every term we apply to the world! Layered human concepts, all the way down, all with the potential for being discovered to be incorrect. And being reminded of that is hugely disconcerting, like finding you're on quicksand, so I can understand how people great freaked out and go into emotionally reactive mode when something they grew up "knowing" is suddenly redefined or just overturned because a lot more is suddenly known about it. (Particularly true and particularly tricky with the study of history!)
But it's also a reminder of how good science works, because absolutely nothing is and should be regarded as certain, even if all the evidence currently fits it - which is unfortunately where conspiracy stuff takes hold, because it wrongheadedly equates this uncertainty with "oh, that means everything is equally uncertain and my idea with no credible evidence holds just as much weight as that one with 99.9% scientific consensus behind it". Something can be fundamentally uncertain *and* almost entirely rock-solid certain at the same time. I wish that was an easier idea to hold in our heads...
As for thinking and consciousness, yes, that's a whole new landscape of understanding that's opening up right now. I just hope we acquire the ability to recognise it when it looks nothing like our own!
I feel like I repeat myself in your comments section because I always just love reading these, and like Asha said I can never predict where they'll go and it's always a surprising delight.
I am disconcerted, though, thinking of all those unpeopled islands and certain independence-craving wealthy libertarian-types who'd like to start their own countries or non-countries or whatever.
❤️ Thank you. (Also, I'm often not entirely sure where they'll go either!)
Yes, the tendency for super-rich folk to buy property and act in a very antisocial way with it, even a way that paves over that place's history with soulless modern glitz, is a regrettable quick of modern human psychology. Or, you know, capitalism. It's encouraging that there are far more uninhabited islands in the world than super-rich people! But in doing something like that, I feel like the libertarian types are also choosing profoundly depressing disconnection - they're making things devoid of the worldly contexts that provide mystery and a sense of belonging and endlessly fascinating complexity, and they end up living in the wealthy-property equivalent of shopping malls? When you pave over everything, you risk ending up with a featureless nothing that's limited by your own imagination, which is increasingly impoverished because you unthinkingly paved over everything that could feed it?
End rant. I promise I will report back when I am super-wealthy.
This newsletter is an island of delight in an endless sea of online content. I love that regardless of where it starts (Capsizing teenage boys! Clueless, homophobic bigots! MURDER swans!) it never ends up where I think it will, and every step along the way is interesting and funny and informative and joyful.
And your comments are exactly the same as that description you gave there, so THANK YOU for your kindness and thoughtfulness, as always, as always. You're the best, Asha.
DITTO
Enjoyable throughout, as always. I recently read that researchers have discovered an underwater canyon in the Antarctic Ocean, thanks to deep-diving seals: they fitted over 200 southern elephant seals with trackers, and they did what seals do and dove down into the ocean, deeper than mapping has thus far reached. After the sealscovery, sonar measurements confirmed the existence of a canyon plunging to depths of more than 2km. Wondering how our seal friends can further help map areas we can't see otherwise.....
Holy crap - thank you. Is that in the next newsletter (which I'm doing the links for right now)?
Also, were my mind clearly not fried from (over-)editing, I should have remembered to tag you re. the Zealandia mapping news because I got it from you. Apologies and amended in the Web version!
Yessir! It is, it's just not in the links I sent you. Since you were understandably working on your own, I kept a few links to add myself as my uptime allowed.
If only history could be taught this way in the classroom. There'd be a lot more history majors!
Thanks, Heather! That's very kind. :)
I actually had a good history teacher and a bad one when I was at school, and the difference between them was, I reckon, a full grade in the marks I eventually got for History. But, I wish history could be taught the way that someone like Bill Bryson writes books: with an aim of entertaining as much as informing, and with a love of the most absurd and ghoulish details...
I was thinking about getting his book, 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. I'm guessing you've already read it. Since I haven't read any of his books yet, would you recommend this one as a starting point?
If you do, you'll quickly discover my newsletter is nothing but a cheap, plastic copy of that book. That's one of my big inspirations. It's magnificent, and a great place to start, yes!
Thank you, Mike. I just ordered the book. Kindle is great, but I still love the feel of paper in my hands so I'll have to wait a couple of days. In the meantime, I'm also into cheap plastic.
Thanks for your writing. You've started me on a fun journey. (You make a difference!)
Oh Mike, I've been busting as I waited for this series to begin.
I live on a tiny island to the south of the 'island continent' of Australia, an island state of our nation called Tasmania.
My husband works across the islands of what we call the Asia-Pacific Basin.
I've been idly wondering if at any point you might delve into the islander mentality. Whatever the case, I think this series will be one to remember.
Thank you!
Thanks so much, Prue. Yes! The human psychology side of it is as fascinating as the geography/geology side. So much to look at.
I'm also interested in the ideas around island ownership - because it is a dream of so many (including me!) to own their own island, and it's such a problematic dream in so many ways (considering how the ownership of so many islands is based on the uglier sides of human behaviour). But then there's what it does to your mind and your sense of your place in the world when you live on an island - and there's that word "remote", which carries all sorts of judgmental baggage that can annoy the hell out of so many island dwellers, and so on.
So much to write about! (As always.) So - yes, I'll get there.
That's fine, Mike. You have so many good posts that it's no hardship waiting.
I've always been interested in islander mentality because of the huge emotional ties it engenders.
It's well-known in Tasmania, that any Tasmanian who has been part of the diaspora interstate and O/S, inevitably has a longing to return. I call it hiraeth and wrote a Substack post some time ago about its effect on me.
So many of us here choose not to leave, or move here because of the isolation, the lack of big city sophistication, the geographic beauty, the way creative endeavour seems so strong on the island. Why is that? No doubt it's the same on many islands across the globe. Is it that the lack of 'noise' allows creative cells to activate? These are questions perhaps you might choose to address. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
Cheers!
Perhaps Zealandia is a continent akin to Pluto being a planet. The idea of it resonates whilst the physicality of it seems very dissimilar to the others which are allowed to claim the name. One is in the way of becoming. The other already submerged under the sea of science.
Yes, I think that's true - the term "continent" is so evocative, but it's also a thing humans have decided upon, it's human-made (and currently human-argued-over). But the romance of it, a "lost continent" with all its implied borders beyond which things are Very Different Compared To Here, is a powerful thing, and we all very much want to believe in Lost Worlds. I imagine this makes this topic a tricky one for scientists to discuss with media journalists, who know that the phrase "lost continent" holds enormous power to grab attention, and "microcontinent" or some other phrase, however scientifically accurate, is just not going to grab eyeballs and minds in the same way. The whole "PLUTO IS A PLANET AND YOU CANNOT TAKE THIS AWAY FROM US" reaction was so fascinating in this regard - I felt it too, a sense of mild outrage that I couldn't pin down or rationalise away. We want our mysteries, and sometimes specific words are where they're held in our language.
Thank you.
Surely India careering into Eurasia and thereby producing Mount Everest et al cannot warrant it being called a separate landmass? Is a separate landmass not separate? Like, not attached? Like, not pushing up cheek by jowl with Annapurna III?
(I like become, but I'm not sure about whence).
(Where does North America stop and South America begin?)
I've approached the question of Gondwana from a less geological viewpoint in this article, if you're interested: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/anarchy-in-the-uk-raine-pondering
Fascinating read Mike! I learned so much and I love learning new things!
Thank you so much for reading, Pamela. Me too! This newsletter is just an excuse for pretending I'm back at school (except without the worst of the teachers I had)...
There you go Mike! I love to research and write about things too. School is awesome, I keep thinking I need to take a class in something.
How fascinating and amazing storytelling .. and Happy Deepavali
Thank you, Lakshmi! And I'm months too late in saying this, but - to you too!
A brilliant post, Mike. Savage Yorkshire swans and all (they're friendlier in Devon). Now I have a question for you: I've lived on 5 continents (giving Antartica and the new one a miss). In your expert opinion, does that make me an example of continental drift?
Ha!
Well, I think that makes you supremely qualified to write about everywhere. What a life! But also: you're only three continents away from having completely conquered the part of this planet that's above sea level. The competitive Risk player in me wants to know what you're going to do about this. How long do you have to dwell in a place for it to count as having "lived" there? And - how good are your postman skills? https://www.timeout.com/news/bizarre-job-alert-you-could-run-the-worlds-most-remote-post-office-in-antarctica-040522
Thanks, Mike. Maybe they'll have better postal services in Antarctica than the UK before long?
As for how long it takes to be in a place before you're living in it, I almost prefer to leave that to the philosophers among us. That should keep them happy for a while. It's usually been a matter of years for me, but I was in Catalonia for a couple of months once, and as I was working there, I felt I was living there.
Thank you for this humorous instruction on the continents. So much has changed since I was a schoolgirl learning about the "seven" continents. Now that I'm preparing to homeschool my grandson, you've helped me learn what I perhaps should teach him ... until of course that nomenclature and lines all change again.
Thanks, Sue! I love this.
If you teach him that absolutely everything in the sciences, including the continents, are still being investigated and you *never know* what future work might uncover, I reckon that's the best and truest kind of science education anyone can get.
Dear Mike,
With all of this talk of continents, you've made my head hurt, so thanks for that.
As a current resident of Australia and a future visitor to Zealandia, let me know if you need me to investigate anything closer for you.
Also, I can think of nothing more natural between two men than harassing swans.
Sincerely,
Michael
Thanks, Michael! Since your newsletter proudly proclaims you are Going Places and I'm taking that as a brand promise that you will pursue a travel story to its very end, I accept your kind offer of help: please explore Zealandia and report back.
For around 94% of your 1,900,000 square mile journey, you're going to need Scuba gear or some kind of submersible. And possibly James Cameron.
But if you wanted to cheat - which would be disappointing, but I guess practical - then you're going to have to visit:
- New Zealand (North Island, South Island, Chatham Islands, New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, the Solander Islands, the Three Kings Islands
- New Caledonia and the islands surrounding it
- Lord Howe Island Group (New South Wales)
- Norfolk Island
- the Cato, Elizabeth, and Middleton reefs (Coral Sea Islands Territory).
This is a substantial undertaking, probably decades of grim, thankless work with long hours and enormous expense, so I wish you luck! I admire your commitment to your work and hope it goes well.
Oooh, sorry but we left there more than a month ago. You SNOOZE you LOSE!
Well, this is fascinating! Thank you, Mike, for adjusting and readjusting the lens of perspective.
Absolute pleasure! Thanks for reading, Holly.
As usual Mr S, you have boggled my world. I only wish that my ageing memory was up to the task of retaining more than a fraction of the gems you dig up for our edification.
Thanks, Cathy. :) I live to boggle.
I love how definitions change over time. You can see this sort of... problem? most prevalently in the conversations around artificial intelligence. "Is it thinking?" "When will AI be conscious/sentient/whatever?" Of course, nobody can agree on a definition of any of those words like "thinking" or "conscious" or what have you.
As a kid, I could never understand why Eurasia isn't really a continent all to itself.
Yes - it's a reminder that we invent every term we apply to the world! Layered human concepts, all the way down, all with the potential for being discovered to be incorrect. And being reminded of that is hugely disconcerting, like finding you're on quicksand, so I can understand how people great freaked out and go into emotionally reactive mode when something they grew up "knowing" is suddenly redefined or just overturned because a lot more is suddenly known about it. (Particularly true and particularly tricky with the study of history!)
But it's also a reminder of how good science works, because absolutely nothing is and should be regarded as certain, even if all the evidence currently fits it - which is unfortunately where conspiracy stuff takes hold, because it wrongheadedly equates this uncertainty with "oh, that means everything is equally uncertain and my idea with no credible evidence holds just as much weight as that one with 99.9% scientific consensus behind it". Something can be fundamentally uncertain *and* almost entirely rock-solid certain at the same time. I wish that was an easier idea to hold in our heads...
As for thinking and consciousness, yes, that's a whole new landscape of understanding that's opening up right now. I just hope we acquire the ability to recognise it when it looks nothing like our own!
I feel like I repeat myself in your comments section because I always just love reading these, and like Asha said I can never predict where they'll go and it's always a surprising delight.
I am disconcerted, though, thinking of all those unpeopled islands and certain independence-craving wealthy libertarian-types who'd like to start their own countries or non-countries or whatever.
❤️ Thank you. (Also, I'm often not entirely sure where they'll go either!)
Yes, the tendency for super-rich folk to buy property and act in a very antisocial way with it, even a way that paves over that place's history with soulless modern glitz, is a regrettable quick of modern human psychology. Or, you know, capitalism. It's encouraging that there are far more uninhabited islands in the world than super-rich people! But in doing something like that, I feel like the libertarian types are also choosing profoundly depressing disconnection - they're making things devoid of the worldly contexts that provide mystery and a sense of belonging and endlessly fascinating complexity, and they end up living in the wealthy-property equivalent of shopping malls? When you pave over everything, you risk ending up with a featureless nothing that's limited by your own imagination, which is increasingly impoverished because you unthinkingly paved over everything that could feed it?
End rant. I promise I will report back when I am super-wealthy.
They really are. It's very depressing. Though if Mike Sowden became very wealthy, I imagine something super cool and fun would arise!