There is arguably no greater repository of outstanding nature and adventure photography than the archives of the National Geographic. The magazine has produced some of the most famous photographs of all time, from Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl to Tim Laman’s Orangutan reaching for figs at the top of a 100 foot tree in Borneo, and many more. Camera manufacturers pay top dollar to have their ads on the back page of NG, because they know the numbers of avid photographers who read the magazine and aspire to produce something approaching the marvels to be found within its covers.

It’s very British to talk about the weather. So it’s fitting that a British university – the University of Reading – offers a 3-week course called Come Rain or Shine: Understanding The Weather. Taking this course will have the effect of turning comments like ‘Looks like rain tomorrow’ into more technical and perhaps even accurate predictions. Cows lying down might mean it’s going to rain, but for the curious who want to know why it’s going to rain, this course is perfect.

Have you ever imagined yourself cast away on an island or lost in the jungle for weeks on end? How would you survive? What would you eat, seeing as shrink-wrapped supermarket produce would be in short supply? You'd have to forage and eat what you found.

Sometimes the Earth bites. Some would say ‘sometimes the Earth bites back,’ with climate change and rising incidents of flooding in mind. But most natural disasters are not man-made. There’s very little we can do at the moment about earthquakes and volcanoes, for example. And hurricanes and typhoons were around long before we started filling the atmosphere with CO2. So studying natural disasters and preparing for them shouldn’t be undertaken with a sense of guilt about self-inflicted damage. It should be done with a simple sense of self-preservation.