Cultural Geography Blog

This video forms part of a resource which I have been putting together over the last few months following the amazing scale and financial clout of Taylor Swift's ERAS tour, which is on course to raise over $1.5 billion - more than any other music tour in history, and that's without all the associated money that is spent on accommodation, travel etc. connected with the concerts - people even travel without a ticket just to stand outside the stadium while the concerts are on. Another useful video on this web page which has the title: 'Why is the world obsessed with Taylor Swift"'  It mentions a Swiftposium meeting. There are also links with the demographic influence she has. The effect is already affecting Australia, as can be seen in this article here, which suggested a few other industries to benefit, including tattoo artists. She's also heading to Europe as well. At the AAG , which this year takes place in Honolulu (happy to accept some support for me to get...

The geography of video games is an area which has received attention from geography researchers over the years. Last year some 3.2bn people played video games, about four in ten people worldwide. The number has risen by about 100m a year, with a big jump during covid lockdowns in 2020. In rich countries two-thirds of people play, nearly half of them women. And though gaming is disproportionately a young person’s hobby (nine out of ten British 16- to 24-year-olds play games) older folk are picking up the habit, including half those aged 55-64. Worldwide, there are more console owners aged 35-44 than aged 16-24, says Karol Severin.  As he puts it, gamers are no longer just “young guys covered in crisps”. Source: The Economist. Phil Jones has written about the sense of place that can be evoked by a game, and I attended an excellent session that he presented. There are also some additional elements to add accuracy, including the representations of weather according to this article. I...

  A new stamp issue with a geographical theme is always something that I can get behind. In recent years, I've bought stamps linked with the Windrush Generation, UK Wildlife, National Parks and Polar explorers. The latest is celebrating 170 years of the Met Office and weather forecasting. They feature a number of important people and events, including Luke Howard , who invented the classification for different cloud types. Second Class Luke Howard, pioneer meteorologist, classified clouds in 1803 Second Class Storm barometer of Robert FitzRoy, founder of the Met Office in 1854 First Class Terra Nova Expedition studied extreme weather in 1910-12 First Class Marine buoys collect data for the Shipping Forecast, first broadcast in 1924 £2.00 Weather observers were vital to the success of the D-Day invasion in 1944 £2.00 Radar and computers improved forecasting accuracy from the 1950s £2.20 Barbara Edwards became the first British female TV weather presenter in 1974 £2.20 Supercomputers...