I think I understand, as a 3d guy...

I'm pretty sure he's using an icosahedral geosphere as opposed to a polar oriented sphere. The problem with polar oriented spheres is that your textures WILL end up as a pinch at each pole...Whereas with an icosahedral geosphere, the shape is made up of many equal sized triangles...With a slightly different style of projection (or UVW unwrap as they call it in 3d land) you can texture this sphere with little to no distortion as long as each triangle is undistorted in the projection.

Pretty smart stuff. I'd love to here your take on it tho su