Sign Language

The Maga Maps Blog Has A New Home!

2009-04-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

We have migrated our blog to a different CMS.

Please continue to follow our blog at www.magamaps.com.

You can now also get MOTD updates via Twitter, by following MagaBlog.

Thank you for your support!

Map O' The Day #50 - How China Sees The World

2009-04-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

The fiftieth installment of MOTD hails from the cover of my favorite periodical, The Economist, March 21-27, 2009 edition, and is illustrated by artist Jon Berkeley.

In light of instability in the global market, the information presented within the graphics is both topical and foreboding. And while the central theme of the graphic is, as the title aptly states, a Chinese perspective towards the world, this issue is not the driving cause for anointing this image as the 50th MOTD.

Rather, what struck me about this graphic, was that it is basically constructed of a basic landscape architecture and a few well placed labels, and yet, it’s chockfull of information pertaining to foreign policy, international conflicts, and economic woes. What the artist has accomplished with this work is a fairly comprehensive high level snapshot of China’s decision-making environment, through a masterful use of four central tenets of information mapping: Representation, Sizing, Placement and Selection.

With those four lenses, take the time to re-examine the image, and you’ll quickly realize the sheer breadth of information a information graphic conveys when attention to principle is upheld.

1976 New Yorker graphic

Map O’ The Day #49 – Anatomy for Kids

2009-03-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today's MOTD is an award winning campaign from the Dubai branch of ad agency PF7 on behalf of Brainobrain Jumeira Child Development Program. Illustrated by artist Jason Freeny of Moist Production, the anatomy schematics for kids took top honors at the 2009 Dubai Lynx International Advertising Festival presented by Cannes Lions, earning the Gold Medal in Print and the highest award of Grand Prix in the Outdoor category. As a result, $20,000 in scholarship money was given to the Brainobrain Jumeira Child Development Program in honor of this award.

The ads are playful, elegant and detailed - with multiple layers of information, packaged in kid-centric visual metaphors. Science IS fun when you use balloon animals, legos and gummy bears - and use map real estate to build on the metaphor, as seen on the balloon animal poster with instructions for making the balloon dog.

The ads utilize an important principle of mapping: map as platform to expand your brand. The map employs the Brainobrain Jumeira program signature approach of whole brain development-based education for children by "activating left and right hemispheres of the brain," through the use of both logical and creative elements (i.e. visual information). Truly an excellent example of how proper execution of information design can reinforce the connection between your brand and your audience.

Ads that make you smarter - go figure!

Map O’ The Day #48 – Life: Start Here...

2009-03-23T09:38:00.001-07:00

Today’s MOTD comes from a superstar in the infographic world, Megan Jaegerman. Recognized for her work in the news industry by Edward Tufte, Jaegerman, “produced some of the best news graphics ever while working at The New York Times from 1990 to 1998. Her work has been described as smart, finely detailed, elegant, witty, inventive, informative.”

This specific graphic revolves around an average lifecycle for a woman, and is laid out in a game board format. Notice how the use of varied element styles, from dolls and figurines to silhouettes and cartoon illustration gives significant vibrancy to a normally ominous message, specifically, health risks associated with aging.

Be sure to read through this one...there are some quite comical messages.

Map O’ The Day #47 – Taking The Train

2009-03-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Today’s image was found off of the Subway Systems websites, @ world.nycsubway.org, and displays daily subway ride statistics.

Other than enjoying the layout, which allows for easy conclusions to be drawn about the data, I thought that the conceptual route maps of each city was a nice second substrata of information.

Moreover, the bright yellow column along the right hand side of the image is chokful of information about each city, from founding date of the route, to the average single ride fare.

Map O’ The Day #46 – The History of Film & Gaming

2009-03-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

Created by TrendONE / BVDW Virtual Think in Germany, this infographic shows a the history, current state, and future projections for the increasingly merged worlds of gaming and film. Worth a read through for those of you who are into either!

Map O’ The Day #45 – Burning Fuel

2009-03-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

This MOTD was created by the NY Times as a part of a campaign to raise awareness around the fight against global warming. Aside from being visually appealing, the graphic shows the interesting comparison of energy usage between automobiles and human beings. Moreover, the image reveals horrifying figures around caloric value in some of our favorite foods, which may prompt a few of us to go for the banana over a bloomin’ onion the next time were “fueling up.”

On a side note, this graphic makes an excellent case for a principle of mapping: Selection. When crafting a map, info graphic, or image, strict adherence ought be paid to the categories and specific items that should be displayed, both in terms of their individual and relative values.

Imagine if this New York times example had shown a car’s fuel requirements against that of almost ANY other animal. The narrative and emotive value of the comparison instantly declines, in effect, scuttling the intended messaging of the artifact.

The consequences from choosing either incorrect, or inferior, information types and mediums, can be range from a substandard story to an unintentional skewing of information away from the desired communication.

Map O’ The Day #44 – West Virginia Slaw Map

2009-03-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

Hot dogs are no light issue, and conflicts have been known to arise regarding what constitutes a ‘real’ hot dog.

The essential parts of the hot dog are not in dispute - a frankfurter sausage and a sliced bun to place it in. It’s what goes on the dog that causes all the trouble and discord. The garnishing and condiments that top up hot dogs vary greatly according to personal style and regional tradition.

This map, hailing from West Virginia Hot Dog Association’s website, displays that While the vast majority of West Virginians prefer hot dogs topped with coleslaw, it is not a standard topping at hot dog joints everywhere in West Virginia. The food culture of our state is diverse and influenced by many factors such as predominate ethnicities and a melding with cultures of surrounding states.This mapping project attempts to document this diversity.

All of the counties shaded in light green have been verified to have HDJs that include slaw as a topping on a hot dog with "everything". Light beige indicate counties where HDJs usually offer slaw, but usually by request only. In dark beige counties you can usually get slaw, but some HDJs may not offer it. Orange indicates counties where slaw is almost never available in mainstream HDJs. Finally, in those counties shaded red, slaw is unheard of. The data from several counties is unconfirmed and we welcome your input if you have specific knowledge that is in conflict with what is presented here. Please email us at

A few preferred styles elsewhere in the country are:
New York: hot dogs topped with steamed onions and a pale, deli-style mustard
Chicago: smothered in yellow mustard, dark green relish, chopped raw onion and tomato slices, sprinkled with celery salt
Kansas City: topped with sauerkraut and melted cheese

Map O' The Day #43 - Donald Duck Family Tree

2009-02-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of Friday fun, here is a more lighthearted MOTD, focused around the loveable Donald Duck. One of the most popular of the Disney cartoon characters, Donald Duck made his debut in the Silly Symphony cartoon "The Wise Little Hen" on June 9, 1934. His fiery temper endeared him to audiences, and in the 1940s he surpassed Mickey Mouse in the number of cartoons reaching the theaters. Eventually, there were 128 Donald Duck cartoons, but he also appeared in a number of others with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Pluto. His middle name, shown in a wartime cartoon, is Fauntleroy.

This map was created by Gilles Maurice for a group of Disney researchers, Calisota Online. You can find more character family trees or check out maps of their universe and environment at, http://goofy313g.free.fr/calisota_online/

Map O' The Day #42 - User Experience, A System Simplified

2009-02-12T07:12:00.000-08:00

This great chart by Dan Saffer that identifies and describes the relationships between various design disciplines.

Decently self explanatory!

Map O’ the Day #41 – A Year In Iraq

2009-02-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

Think what you will of the New York Times, but the paper is without a doubt known for putting together compelling Info graphics which display data sets in a visually stimulating manner. Authored by Adriana Lins De Albuquerque & Alicia Chen, this image is no exception for the publication, as their portrayal of casualties during 2007 in all of Iraq masterfully shows the gruesome realities of war. The Times utilizes both color, figure type, and figure quantity to display the known data sets.

One should be somewhat leery when drawing insights from a map such as this, as often times authors of both info graphics and maps will choose to use scale, selection and representation in an effort to aim the viewer towards a specific conclusion or view. I’m not sure that I see a blatant statistical misrepresentation in this case, but without cross referencing the original data with the Times representation, it’s quite difficult to be sure of it’s objectivity.

In any event, this graphic is worth scanning for some undeniable trends in the reported data, such as the large amount of Iraqi police officers killed by hostile forces, namely, other Iraqis and foreign terrorists.

[I apologize for the resolution when viewing the comprehensive graphic, but zooming in provides an enhancement]

Map O' The Day #40 - The Land of Greendale

2009-02-05T14:32:00.000-08:00

Today’s MOTD is a personal favorite – a map of the fictitious land of Greendale from the album cover art for Neil Young’s Greendale. Illustrated by James Mazzeo, who also illustrated the cover of Young’s Zuma, the map illustrates the backdrop for the rock opera album, centered on the adventures and trials of the Green family.

Just as web 2.0 has morphed the liner notes of yesterday’s record into downloadable songbooks and bonus features that accompany the digital album, the Greendale map takes interactivity to a whole new level. The album has its very own website where you can scroll over the map to enlarge certain details relevant to the songs.

It is becoming increasingly popular to make use of technology to enhance the depth of information and degree of interactivity on once static visual information maps.

Map O’ The Day #39 – Inside The Muppets!

2009-01-26T07:49:00.000-08:00

This version of MOTD, was created by Lawson Parker, another student @ UNC Chapel Hill, under the teachings of world famous Info graphic creator, Alberto Cairo. He has listed her sources at the bottom left of the map.

Muppets: Who Are They. What Are They. How They Work.

Map O' The Day #38 - Where Is Your Vino Coming From?

2009-01-22T12:24:00.000-08:00

This installation of MOTD, was created by Shayna Ayers, a student @ UNC Chapel Hill, under the teachings of world famous Info graphic creator, Alberto Cairo. She has listed her sources at the bottom left of the map.

The map, which captures a wide array of elements pertaining to vino, takes the user through a tour of the Italian wine producing regions. She presents information regarding pure production quantity by region, production by region in regards to quality, (see the map for meaning), recommendations, food pairings, and general facts about vino.

I thought the colors in this were fantastic, with a solid balance of photography, text, and charts/maps. One principle that I think she’s applied with great force is selection. By that I mean, it’s apparent she spent quite a bit of time on the categories or types of information that would assist a user in gaining a fuller understanding of Italian wines. The only thing that might have added further perspective would be displaying global consumption per region, to gain an understanding of $$$’s and notoriety for each region among the consuming global masses.

Map O' The Day #37 - The Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music

2009-01-08T10:03:00.001-08:00

Some of you may have seen this map already, but its’ a favorite of mine. Authored by Reebee Garofalo, The Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music chart has been praised by many scholars and music fans alike.

Covering the time period from 1955 to 1978, more than 700 artists and 30 styles of music are mapped in currents flowing from left-to-right. For each performer, the length of time that he/she remained a major hit maker is provided. The overlapping streams allow you to compare the longevity and influence of multiple artists for the same time period. The birth and genealogy of each stylistic category is presented, along with an estimation of its share of total record sales.

Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music is referenced in Edward Tufte's, Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (Graphics Press): "With intense richness of detail, this nostalgic and engaging chart fascinates many viewers (...) Also the illustration presents a somewhat divergent perspective on popular music: songs are not merely singles - unique, one-time, de novo happenings - rather, music and music-makers share a pattern, a context, a history."

Map O’ The Day #36 – Literary Organism

2009-01-07T07:45:00.001-08:00

Today’s MOTD is a truly unique representation of Jack Kerouac’s, On The Road, by Stefanie Posavec, which is entitled “Literary Organism”. A quick glance at the map, and you’ll understand that Posavec’s title is appropriate. She has executed a brilliant deconstruction of Kerouac’s famous novel, by breaking down the entire book into it’s literary elements, such as, basic structure, word count, character presence, and, my favorite, the type of event/behavior engaged in by the main characters.

As the theme for this week is multivariate analysis, this map remains a perfect example of a wide range of the subject’s elements being built into the structure and display of the information.

A quick note on something that I found interesting about this graphic was how closely the representation mirrors a structure and form that you might expect to find in nature. I couldn’t stop coming back to the idea that a beautiful novel, even when broken apart to it’s barest forms, still retains a form that’s compelling and appealing.

Map O' The Day #35 - Foreclosures

2009-01-06T14:48:00.000-08:00

This infographic was published in the New York Times, who created it from sources at First American CoreLogic, LoanPerformance, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Census Bureau, and provides an excellent look at a poor situation, namely, the foreclosure situation in America.

Much like yesterday’s MOTD, this graphic utilizes multivariate analysis, using both height, color and location in order to show the %’s of subprime mortgage foreclosures in metropolitan areas, as well as the subprime mortgage foreclosures overall.

A key difference in this infographic from yesterday’s is that simple multivariate analysis in a central map wasn’t enough. Rather, the NYT employed a systems of maps to further contextualize the data. If you draw your attention to the bottom right, there are two additional maps depicting the construction boom as well as job loss, which allows a user to draw correlations among data sets.

This is a great example of what Maga Design refers to when discussing a “system of maps” that helps create insights while driving towards outcomes.

Map O' The Day #34 - The World of Science Fiction

2009-01-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

The first Map O’ The Day in the new year is #34 – The World of Science Fiction.

This graphic, from Stephanie Fox, via i09.com, lays out a portion of the science fiction community. She uses a coloring system to show which medium the character(s) originated from, (TV, Book, Comics, and Video Games.)

She furthers the impact by using color to determine it’s creative origin: Marvel, DC, Image or Other. But she wasn’t finished with two variables describing creator and medium, because as she draws connections in the science fiction world, she uses different lines styles to show the frequency and type of encounter between connected parties.

This map, while not that visually appealing, demonstrates a principle that Maga Design firmly employs, that of multivariate analysis, meaning, a collection of procedures which involve observation and analysis of more than one statistical variable at a time. It’s apparent that Fox understands that presenting multiple informative elements about a subject can contribute towards creating insights.

Map O' The Day #33 - Jim Morrison Grave

2008-12-16T10:41:00.001-08:00

In creating this map, the point was to drive home two truths of Maga’s maps, specifically, that maps work in systems and that maps are always about an outcome or goal. In this instance, your goal would be to find Jim Morrison’s grave, and as you can see, if taken by themselves, none of the maps would have you finding success in your journey. Rather, all the views of the information are necessary to understand your pathway.

Maga Design believes that whether you are implementing ERP or training your organization for a process change, that you will need a selection of maps that allow you to understand the true nature of the effort. This means presenting the active environment so as to provide stakeholders with easily identifiable challenges, (the flight to Paris from America would be the example used in today’s map), best pathways (making a left at grave 28 on the cemetery map), and an idea of what success looks like! (where’s the actual grave, what does it look like).

An interesting thing to spend a moment on with this info. graphic is the picture of a graffiti wall in the center. Maps are so natural to the way humans think that individuals took the time to make “road signs” throughout the cemetery to get to the hallowed burial site.

Map O’ The Day #32 – The Negro Leagues

2008-12-10T10:22:00.001-08:00

This map, from Bill Turianski, circa 2007, is a neat view of the Negro League presence across the country, with “callouts” off to each side about each club. I’m partial to the Homestead Grays, who played in Pittsburgh as well as Washington DC and won 10, count em’, 10 Negro National League Championships, and 3 Negro Word Series Titles.

What I like about this map are the hand drawn logos for each club that give the map a unique look and feel. Overall just a cool picture of a valuable part of American sports and social history.

Map ‘O The Day #31 – Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea

2008-12-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

Today’s selection comes from either Conde Nast Traveler, or John Grimwade, and is a well proportioned look of the trip to where tectonic plate activity has allowed for the Earth’s molten core to penetrate ocean bottom.

It’s a little bit on the textbook side of things stylistically, but I find that it is an example of one of principles to which Maga adheres to, specifically, using systems of maps to present a variety of important views on a subject. This type of systems thinking allows an individual to understand the information on a variety of levels, from the strategic to the tactical, as well as subsequently becoming empowered to make more informed decisions, which leads to increased impact with upon acting.

Map O' The Day #30 - Travel

2008-12-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

Today’s Map O’ the Day is all about “getting around”, or the different modes of transportation and some usage statistics regarding the select types. It was designed by the folks at International Networks Archive, a group out of Princeton University and presents some pretty interesting statistics including my favorite tidbit: the fact that the rise of mega yachts has been 214% since 1996.

A neat aspect of this presentation is the use of actual transportation methods to display the information.

Map O’ The Day #29 - Czech Beer Map

2008-12-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

In thinking about how best to conclude the “food” themed week for Map O’ The Day, I landed on a map that has a subject matter near and dear to my heart. Specifically, Czech beer. This shows a comprehensive view of all the excellent breweries in the land of beer. I believe this map was created by the Czech government as a travel guide.

While the design of this map isn’t spectacular, keep in mind that today is the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition, so go out and have a beer to celebrate. You can even fly to the Czech Republic and find yourself a brewery if you're so inclined!!

Map O’ The Day #28 – Water Wars

2008-12-04T14:07:00.000-08:00

Another map from the International Networks Archive via Princeton U that presents some interesting views on the world’s water supply as well as current and future usage. Pretty amazing to think that even in the modern world that 7 people die every minute globally from a lack of clean water.

This map utilizes one of the Maga mapping principles, namely, using a system, or multiple views of information to understand the landscape. See the far right side to understand this chronological system which is depicting the evolution of the clean water issue.

Gotta love anything with toy soldiers in the design, and a strong use of color and image [silhouette] to provide bold emphasis on the usage by continent figures.

Map O’ The Day #27 – Sch’mokin

2008-12-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

So while cigarettes aren’t really food (theme for this week), I suppose to some they pass for a meal! This is another map from International Networks Archive (Princeton U), and like yesterday’s McBucked map, I think this map is wildly successful in it’s presentation.

The global tobacco smuggling trade, and it’s accompanying logistics are front and center, but if you examine the map, that information set is not the true purpose of this image. In a very “Tuftesque” (think Napoleon Invasion Map), they’ve created a very powerful anti-smoking message by framing the world tobacco trade map with compelling reasons to not smoke cigarettes.

Particularly interesting to me was the use of actual photography in the chemicals section on the far left to provide shock factor at cigarettes negative ingredients. That decision is applying one of the major principles of maps: POWER. As mapping guru Robert Karrow Jr. puts it, “Maps have an undeniable way of expressing knowledge of, mastery of, and control over the environments they depict.”

We should all be striving to exude this type of authority over our own subject matters!

Map O' The Day #26 - McBucked

2008-12-02T10:51:00.000-08:00

So, in sticking with the food theme this week, (like we need anymore reminders to gorge ourselves around the holidays), I’ve attached this excellent map / info graphic regarding Starbucks and McDonalds, which I found on the Princeton website.

Pay particular attention to the fact that McDonalds, while being currently ranked worse in customer satisfaction, is still bringing in gross sales larger than the GDP of Afghanistan!

There’s a strong use of shape in this graphic that instantly allows a viewer to understand proportion for both Starbucks supply and McDonalds restaurant distribution. Not an overwhelming amount of information, which is a positive in this case because it allows a strong representational presentation of key storytelling elements for both the Burger and Latte giants! Enjoy.

Map O' The Day #25 - Dunkin' Donuts

2008-12-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

The data here is from 2004, and covers 70,000 square miles. This is from a Carnegie Mellon student, Alexander Cheek, who majors in Information Design. Pretty interesting conclusions to be drawn from this view.

Map O’ The Day #24 – Turkey Trail

2008-11-25T09:43:00.000-08:00

So, it’s not quite Thanksgiving, but I thought I’d send this out in the spirit of the oncoming holiday.

This map is a lifecycle of a turkey, well at least of a domesticated turkey. I think the imagery is very strong, and for some folks serves as a reminder of why they are vegetarians! It’s interesting that the illustrator has used such childlike design to represent the systematic slaughter and consumption of a quite tasty creature!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Map O’ The Day #23 – Pop vs. Soda

2008-11-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

It’s definitely called POP!!!!

When on a hot summer’s day you buy a carbonated beverage to quench your thirst, how do you order it? Do you ask for a soda, a pop or something else? That question lay at the basis of an article in the Journal of English Linguistics (Soda or Pop?, #24, 1996) and of a map, showing the regional variation in American English of the names given to that type of drink.

The article was written by Luanne von Schneidemesser, PhD in German linguistics and philology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English. And although there might be weightier issues in life (or even in linguistics) than the preferred terminology for a can of soft drink, there’s nothing trivial about this part of the beverage industry.

“According to an article last year in the Isthmus, Madison’s weekly newspaper, Americans drink so much of the carbonated beverages sold under such brand names as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Mountain Dew, and 7-Up that consumption averages 43 gallons per year for every man, woman, and child in the United States,” Von Schneidemesser begins her article. “The Statistical Abstract of the United States (1994) confirms this: 44.1 gallons per person in 1992, compared to the next most consumed beverages: beer (32.7 gallons), coffee (27.8 gallons), and milk (25.3 gallons).”

Coke: this generic term for soft drinks predominates throughout the South, New Mexico, central Indiana and in a few other single counties in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. ‘Coke’ obviously derives from Coca-Cola, the brand-name of the soft drink originally manufactured in Atlanta (which explains its use as a generic term for all soft drinks in the South).

Pop: dominates the Northwest, Great Plains and Midwest. The world ‘pop’ was introduced by Robert Southey, the British Poet Laureate (1774-1843), to whom we also owe the word ‘autobiography’, among others. In 1812, he wrote: A new manufactory of a nectar, between soda-water and ginger-beer, and called pop, because ‘pop goes the cork’ when it is drawn. Even though it was introduced by a Poet Laureate, the term ‘pop’ is considered unsophisticated by some, because it is onomatopoeic.

Soda: prevalent in the Northeast, greater Miami, the area in Missouri and Illinois surrounding St Louis and parts of northern California. ‘Soda’ derives from ‘soda-water’ (also called club soda, carbonated or sparkling water or seltzer). It’s produced by dissolving carbon dioxide gas in plain water, a procedure developed by Joseph Priestly in the latter half of the 18th century. The fizziness of soda-water caused the term ‘soda’ to be associated with later, similarly carbonated soft drinks.

Other, lesser-used terms: include ‘dope’ in the Carolinas and ‘tonic’ in and around Boston, both fading in popularity. Other generic terms for soft drinks outside the US include ‘pop’ (Canada), ‘mineral’ (Ireland), ‘soft drink’ (New Zealand and Australia). The term ‘soft drink’, finally, arose to contrast said beverages with hard (i.e. alcoholic) drinks.

Map O' The Day #22 - Economist Pizza Box

2008-11-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

The Economist "Get A World View" pizza boxes: Using pizza boxes as a method for delivering more than just a pizza pie, British news magazine The Economist topped pizza boxes with pie charts showing stats relating to world food distribution, such as world cheese imports and global wheat consumption. Distributed through 20 Philly-area pizza shops with close proximity to universities, the charts aimed to inform students about how their consumption affects the rest of the world and also to show that The Economist's content is not only educational but also relevant to their lifestyle. Now that's food for thought!

Map O’ The Day #22 – Japanese View of America

2008-11-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

This map is basically what would happen if you got a bunch of Japanese guys in a room, got them drunk, and then asked them to draw what they could remember about America on a bar napkin.

Some funny things of note:

Alaska is an island, including the fictional city of Ice Palace.
Montana is located oceanside, under Seattle, which apparently has a thing with cats.
Portland and Lake Tahoe are near the supersized San Francisco Bay, which contains an equally inflated Alcatraz.
San Fran itself is placed on the wrong side of its bay.
Los Angeles (under the sign still reading ‘Hollywoodland’) is just north of Arizona; close by are the cities of Las Vegas, Tombstone, Phoenix and Carlsbad Caverns.
So great they named it twice: another Carlsbad Caverns appears near El Paso, which is separated from Houston by a large bay, near which can also be found the (Mexican) cities of Oaxaca and Mexico City.
The north (labeled ‘Minnesota’) is dominated by St Paul, Minneapolis, Yellowstone and Chicago, which boasts an enormous skyscraper (probably but not recognizably the Sears Tower).
The northwestern peninsula of America is called Michigan, and counts two major cities: Detroit and Indianapolis.
New Jersey apparently is a hole in the ground, while New York is located on an island way off the mainland.
New Orleans is placed about right, Atlanta is too far south (and south of Florida).
The centre of the country is dominated by the gigantic monument of Mount Rushmore, not far from the town of Missouri. To the south, apparently surrounded by desert, is the city of Dallas.
Oh yes, and there is no Canada! Makes one wonder where that waterfall on America’s northeastern peninsula comes from.

Map O’ The Day #20 – Gnomes of Europe

2008-11-19T14:18:00.000-08:00

In 1976, Dutch illustrator Rien Poortvliet and writer Wil Huygen published ‘Gnomes’, a quasi-scientific work about the history, anatomy, habits, quirks and other aspects of the lives of these little people. The book, supposedly written with the consent and cooperation of the gnomes, was an international success, translated in 21 different languages and selling over 4 million copies.

Gnomes are extremely small, human-like creatures who wear pointy red hats, all have beards (the men, not the women) and live in holes beneath the ground. They are benevolent, caring for animals, but also sympathetic to humans. Several subspecies can be distinguished: wood gnomes, garden gnomes, dune gnomes (at the coast), farm gnomes and mill gnomes. Or at least some people believe so; in the olden days, gnomes were an accepted fact of life, as is attested by the widespread knowledge of them, but their ever rarer sightings have confined them to the realm of folklore.

This map shows the extent of the gnome habitat in Europe: vast but fragmented, from Ireland in the west to an eastern boundary deep in Siberia, and from high up in Scandinavia to a southern limit running through Belgium to Switzerland and down into the northern Balkan. Southern countries like France, Spain, Italy, Albania, most of ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece are (almost) completely gnome-free. Heavy concentrations of gnomes can be found in the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Alps and Carpathians and areas of Belarus and the Ukraine.

Map O’ The Day #19 – 2008 Voting vs. 1800’s Cotton Production

2008-11-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

The top map is voting patterns in this 2008 election– the bottom map is cotton production in 1860

Map O’ The Day # 18 – World’s First Sat Nav

2008-11-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

So, this isn’t REALLY a map, but it’s just too cool to pass up.

Satellite navigation (SatNav) is a lot older than previously thought. In fact, it’s even decades older than man-made satellites themselves. This fantastic contraption, called the ‘Routefinder’, showed 1920s drivers in the UK the roads they were travelling down, gave them the mileage covered and told them to stop when they came at journey’s end.

The technology - a curious cross between the space age and the stone age - consisted of a little map scroll inside a watch, to be ’scrolled’ (hence the word) as the driver moved along on the map. A multitude of scrolls could be fitted in the watch to suit the particular trip the driver fancied taking.

The system has several obvious drawbacks - a limited number of available journeys, and the inability of the system to respond to sudden changes of direction. Also: no warning of road works or traffic jams ahead.

Not that there were that many traffic jams in 1920s Britain. The Routefinder, one of many bizarre patented gadgets now on display at the British Library, didn’t take off because there were too few drivers, i.e. potential customers, at that time in Britain. Or maybe also because it was a bit impractical, distracting drivers from what they were supposed to watch - the road.

Map O’ The Day #17 – Atlantropa

2008-11-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

Herman Sörgel’s Atlantropa is the craziest, most megalomaniacal scheme from the 20th century you never heard of.

Sörgel (1885-1952) was a renowned German architect of the Bauhaus school, and a philosopher reflecting on culture, space and geopolitics. On the future’s horizon, he saw the emergence of three global superpowers, one uniting the American continent, another a Pan-Asian block, and Europe – possibly the weakest of the three.

His solution was to engineer Europe out of its problems. Sörgel based his solution for Pan-European power and self-sufficiency on the observation that, although significant amounts of water flow into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar (from the Atlantic Ocean) and the Dardanelles (from the Black Sea), its level stays the same, through evaporation. Hence his proposal to dam the Mediterranean at both ends, using the reduced inflow to generate massive amounts of hydroelectricity (110,000 Megawatt via several dams, of which 50,000 MW via the Gibraltar dam alone) and in the process create new land, which not only could be used for colonisation, but would also connect Europe to Africa. Thus would be created a new supercontinent, Atlantropa (giving the former easy access to the latter’s raw materials).

Sörgel first publicised his ideas in his 1929 book Mittelmeer-Senkung, Sahara-Bewässerung, Panropaprojekt (‘Lowering the Mediterranean, Irrigating the Sahara: the Panropa Project’), reiterating and specifying them in Atlantropa (1932). Later versions of the project included plans to create a series of giant lakes in Central Africa (Sörgel’s father, significantly, pioneered hydroelectricity in Bavaria).

Sörgel, as a visionary pacifist, had noble motives and his ideas were not without merit, but the logistics of the project were daunting. He saw cheap hydroelectricity as the answer to a future in which non-renewable energy sources such as coal, gas and oil would dwindle to depletion; he thought colonising new lands in the Mediterranean would give European nations a positive focus towards cooperation and help avoid another war. The growth of industry and agriculture would thus be safeguarded. And the land reclamation of parts of the Mediterranean seafloor would mirror, on a much larger scale, the centuries-old communal struggle of Holland against the North Sea. It would also provide another outlet for Napoleon’s vision of forging a peaceful European Union through the joint colonisation of Europe’s East (an idea no doubt constructed to co-justify Napoleon’s Russia campaign of 1812). The massive works would go on for more than a century, eliminating unemployment for generations.

But consider what was to be the lynchpin of Atlantropa, the Gibraltar dam. At its narrowest, the Strait of Gibraltar is 14 km (9 mi) wide. And yet, for some reason, Sörgel decided the dam should be built 30 km further inside the Mediterranean, where it would have to be significantly longer. The foundations for the dam would have to be 2.5 km wide, and 300 m high. To complete, it would take 10 years, and 200,000 workers, labouring in 4 continuous shifts. The dam would be crowned by a 400 meter high tower. Calculations at the time cast doubt on whether there would be enough concrete in the world to complete the gargantuesque project.

And consider what would happen to the Mediterranean, cut in two by the lower sea levels, with Sicily connected to both Tunisia and the Italian mainland (allowing, among other things for a regular train service between Berlin and Cape Town). In the western half, the water would be lowered by 100 meters, in the eastern half by as much as 200 meters, combining to create 576,000 km2 new dry land, a fifth of the Mediterranean’s surface, or more than the surface of Belgium and France together. Imagine the problems and traumas this would create for coastal cities such as Marseille or Genoa. Sörgel did propose the construction of new harbours, and did provide a special solution for Venice: another dam would safeguard its lagoon from drying out. But that lagoon would be a lake, 500 km away from the nearest seashore.

Sörgel’s plan would be considered outdated today for more reasons than just its megalomania. It was also completely eurocentric, proposing a Euro-African continent entirely run by and for the benefit of Europe(ans), Africa(ns) being reduced to supplying raw materials (he also saw a strong Atlantropa, also controlling the Middle East, as a bulwark against the ‘Yellow Peril’). Furthermore, there was totally no regard for its ecological impact (the increased salinity of the remaining Mediterranean Seas would have killed off much of the flora and fauna, the precipitation patterns could shift dramatically). And one shudders to think what would happen if the giant Gibraltar dam would be breached by a tsunami, an earthquake or a terrorist attack.

Despite his pacifist leanings, Sörgel attempted to reformulate his ideas in a way more favourable to the national-socialist world view. In 1938, he wrote Die drei grossen A: Amerika, Atlantropa, Asien - Grossdeutschland un italienisches Imperium, die Pfeiler Atlantropas (‘The Three Big A’s: America, Atlantropa, Asia – Greater Germany and the Italian Empire, the Pillars of Atlantropa’), and in 1942 the equally Lebensraum-ish Atlantropa-ABC: Kraft, Raum, Brot (‘Atlantropa ABC: Strength, Space, Bread’).

Sörgel’s ideas never caught on with the Nazis, whose expansionist plans were oriented more towards the East than towards the South. The idea therefore survived the Second World War, but was eventually rendered moot by the advent of nuclear power and the end of colonialism. Sörgel kept defending his ideas literally to the death: in 1952, he was hit and killed by a car while biking to hold a speech on his Atlantropa project, the dream of which died a slow death after his own. In 1960, the Atlantropa Institute was closed. Although Atlantropa never came close to realisation, or maybe because of it, the concept did gain some currency in science fiction circles. A few examples:

Soviet SF writer Grigory Grebnev’s ‘The Flying Station’ (1950) describes a future in which the Socialist Revolution has triumphed, but small groups of Neo-Nazis hiding near the North Pole are conspiring to destroy the Revolution’s most precious project, a Gibraltar dam.
Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Man in the High Castle’ (1962) mentions in passing the draining of the Mediterranean by the victorious Nazis (as well as their genocide on Africans).

It shows (in the upper left corner) Venice, connected via a canal to the Mediterranean, and (in the upper right corner) the Sea of Marmara with dam and power station, (in the lower left corner) the main dam and power station at Gibraltar, (in the lower middle of the map) a second dam at Sicily to facilitate the differentiated lowering of the eastern Mediterranean’s sea level and (in the lower right corner) an extension of the Suez Canal. The legend indicates planned rail links, planned irrigation areas through desalinisation plants, and amount of land reclaimed (in kilometers).

The second map of the ‘African’ part of the project can be found here, on a page called Xefer. It shows the African interior dominated by a few huge, artificial lakes: Lake Chad hypertrophied into the Chad Sea, reaching deep into the Sahara, its overflow connected to the Mediterranean, but also connected via the Ubangi Overflow to a titanic Congo Lake, created by damming the Congo River and flooding most of Congo’s interior.

Map O’ The Day #16 — Holmes, Sweet Holmes

2008-11-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

Truly some of the great stories of all times.

Russell Stutler is an American artist living in Tokyo; his website showcases, among other examples of his graphic art, this ink and pen floorplan of 221B Baker Street in London, one of the best-known fictional addresses of all time – as it is the residence of literature’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. The floorplan was “drawn from notes taken while reading all 60 Sherlock Holmes stories twice in a row. If it appears in the books, it appears in this drawing,” says Mr Stutler.

Baker Street, in Westminster’s Marylebone district, these days is a busy thoroughfare, more prosaically known as the A41. When you exit the Baker Street Tube station – the first underground station in the world, by the way – you can’t miss the larger-than-life bronze statue of the street’s best-known resident. But Sherlock wasn’t the only fictional figure to live on Baker Street: so did James Bond, DangerMouse, Sexton Blake (the “poor man’s Sherlock Holmes”) and Dusty Springfield (okay, she’s not fictional). Mme Tussaud’s waxworks museum had been a fixture on Baker Street from 1835 to 1884, and is now located on Marylebone Road, just around the corner.

Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, was located by the author in an upstairs apartment of one of Baker Street’s then very high-class residences. In Doyle’s day, the street numbers on Baker Street only went up to 100, which probably explains why he chose 221B – to fictionalize Holmes’s address. More recently, the number 221 has been assigned (among others) to an art deco building housing, until 2002, the Abbey National building society. The company had to hire a ‘secretary to Mr Holmes’ to deal with all the incoming mail addressed to Doyle’s intrepid detective. A bronze plaque at the building’s facade details Holmes’ and Watson’s moving in to 221B.

And yet, the ‘true’ location of the detective’s residence remains a matter of dispute among hardcore Holmesologists. For Baker Street also houses a Sherlock Holmes museum (officially at number 239, but displaying ‘221B’) in a Georgian house similar to the one Holmes would have occupied. Holmes’s mail is now delivered to the museum instead of at number 221. A third version of the Holmes residence is in the upstairs floor of the Sherlock Holmes Pub, on Northumberland Street near the Charing Cross station.

But Mr Stutler’s floorplan may be the truest rendering of the pipe-smoking, fact-deducing detective’s residence: after all, it is as fictional as its occupant, and was constructed from all the relevant data in Doyle’s stories.

Map O' The Day #15 - Blonde Map of Europe

2008-11-10T16:50:00.000-08:00

Q: How do you get a blonde out of a tree?
A: Wave

According to this map – and if you really believe that blondes have less brains –a nasty fall like that is more likely to happen in the central parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, where at least 80% of the population is fair-haired, the highest figure in all of Europe.

This map, indicating the varying degrees of ‘blondness’ in Europe, shows how fair hair gets rarer further away from this core area – towards the south, as one intuitively might presume, but also towards the east, west and even towards the north.

The consecutive bands (coloured in such a way as to approximately represent the ‘average’ hair colour in each area) surrounding the core blonde area in Scandinavia in most cases don’t correspond with national boundaries, but could be taken to represent certain degrees of ethnic variation, often with a possible historical explanation.

The highest percentages of fair-haired people can be found around the Baltic Sea (e.g. Denmark, the Polish coast and the Baltic states), making it in effect an almost entirely blonde-bounded lake. Only the German part of the Baltic coastline is remarkably un-blonde.
Iceland was settled by mainly Norwegian colonists, and Icelanders still share the same degree of blondness with the largest part of Norway.

The southern border of the fairer-haired part of Great Britain seems to correspond quite well with the southern border of the Danelaw, which was ruled and settled by the Danish in the early Middle Ages.

The northern border of the 50-79% blonde area in Britain excludes the Highlands, perhaps indicating this was a refuge for the darker-haired Celtic people of Scotland.
The darkest-haired part of France seems to correspond with those areas most heavily populated by its more ancient Gallo-Roman inhabitants, lighter-haired regions possibly reflect a later influx of Celts (in Brittany) and a more pronounced settlement of Frankish tribes of Germanic origin (in northern France and down towards Burgundy).

Galicia prides itself on its Celtic heritage. Maybe this explains the relative blondness of that nort-west corner of Spain. The darker-haired area of Switzerland seems to correspond with the areas where Rhaeto-Roman and Italian are spoken. The blonder area in northern Italy might reflect a larger Germanic, Celtic and/or Slavic component of the local population, a similar area in the heel of Italy, way down south, is more of a mystery.

A significant blonder-darker divide cuts through the Balkans, dividing Serbia in two (whilst Montenegro lands on the ‘blonder’ side of the border, and Kosovo on the ‘darker’ side).
Romanian areas closest to the Hungarian border are equally blonde – many ethnic Hungarians live in Romania, possibly most of them closest to the border. Moldova, ethnically Romanian, is equally dark-haired. As is an adjacent part of the Ukraine, which for the largest part is as blonde as most of central and eastern Europe (all the way down to Georgia). The darker areas in Russia’s far north (the Kola peninsula) and further east (Siberia) are probably due to the prevalence of native, darker-haired peoples, e.g. the Saami (formerly referred to as the Lapps), who also account for the darker area at the very north of the Scandinavian peninsula.

Map O’ The Day #14 - MoonWalk

2008-11-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. He didn’t moonwalk alone – ‘Buzz’ Aldrin joined him on the surface – and he didn’t walk far. After traveling hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the landing crew of the Apollo 11 lunar mission barely covered an area the size of a football throw.

Map O’ The Day #13 – Slumless, Smokeless Cities

2008-11-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

The map was drawn up by Sir Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928), the father of the garden city movement. Howard believed the living conditions of the poor, huddled masses cramped together in giant, insalubrious cities could be improved by combining the best aspects of town and country and carefully allocating space to housing, industry and agriculture.
He explained his urban planning ideas in ‘Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform’ (1898), republished as ‘Garden Cities of To-morrow’ in 1902, the year before he would actually found the very first garden city in the world: Letchworth Garden City, in the south of England. In 1920, he would found a second one, Welwyn Garden City, where he single-handedly planted a tree in the garden of each house.

The British garden city movement was important influence on the later strategy of building new towns in the UK, and spawned parallel movements in the US, Canada, Argentina, Israel and Germany.
As with most instances of social engineering, the garden city movement didn’t quite achieve what it set out to do. Its laudable motives and egalitarian vision contrast with the often depressing artificiality of ‘garden cities’, and the fact that they merely function as dormitories to the larger cities they so often adjoin.
This map of a planned, but as yet unbuilt conurbation of ‘slumless, smokeless cities’ has a few notable aspects:

Central City (pop. 58.000) is the hub for 6 surrounding garden cities (pop. 32.000 each), all given idyllic names such as Philadelphia (’brotherly love’), Rurisville (as in ‘rural’), Justitia, Gladstone (presumably after the Prime Minister), Garden City and Concord.
Each of these 7 urban centres is surrounded by a canal, which also connects them to the neighbouring and the central cities, forming a wheel-shaped system of waterways, the Inter Municipal Canal.
A slightly smaller circle is formed by the Inter Municipal Railway. Within this circle lie several curious institutions: ‘Homes for Waifs’ (one imagines a neighbourhood populated by petite, sulking catwalk beauties), ‘Epileptic Farms’ (must be annoying for the cows when they’re being milked), ‘Large Farms’, an ‘Insane Asylum’ and a ‘Home for Inebriates’.
Outside the circular railway, indeed outside the circular canal, are ‘Convalescent Homes’, ‘Stone Quarries’, ‘Cemetery’, a ‘College for the Blind’ and ‘Industrial Homes’.
Although all basically the same shape (a circle divided into four equal parts by the intersecting waterways), each of the satellite cities has a different lay-out, allowing for variation (so those inebriates aren’t unduly confused on their way home)

Map O' The Day #12 - 2004 Electoral Map

2008-11-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: This is not a political statement of any kind, it’s simply a refresher of how that country voted last election.

Good reference for those of you planning to be peeled to the TV this evening.

Map O' The Day #11 - The Dark Side of the Moon

2008-11-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

This map is of the dark side of the moon, which here looks more like a Jackson Pollock action painting, its riotous colours corresponding to geological materials and phenomena. Many of the colour spots are circular in nature, reflecting the large number of meteorites that have impacted on the lunar surface, unprotected by an atmosphere, over many, many centuries.

The map is one of a series produced by NASA and the US Geological Survey between 1971 and 1998.

Map O' The Day #10 - Haunted Houses USA

2008-10-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

http://hauntedhouses.com/map.cfm

Ok, so this is a little bit different from what the Map O’ The Day’s are intended to be. But, considering the holiday, I figured this Interactive map to search for haunted dwellings and historical sites would be spot on.

Happy Halloween!

Map O’ The Day #9 – UFO Hotspots Map

2008-10-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, that’s right a map about where the crazies live. That said, it troubles me there’s a big red dot on my hometown, Pittsburgh, PA.

Alien encounters, abductions and sightings are very much out of the picture since they were milked for televisual success by the popular series The X-Files in the 1990s. This diminution of media coverage for UFOs and suchlike could of course be part of the very elaborate cover-up by the US government, which obviously has to be in cahoots with the more ominous races of aliens currently running the show in Area 51.

That doesn’t prevent the brave J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies from Chicago from publishing a map of UFO sightings in the US. It indicates the number of UFO reports per 100.000 people by county in the continental US. Some observations:

There is a marked difference in levels of UFO visitation between the eastern and western halves of the continental US. Apparently, extraterrestrials like it out west.
Marked exceptions to this rule is a hotspot in northern Minnesota, several others spread out mainly in Missouri and Illinois and a small area in the Florida panhandle.
Aliens like the west, but generally don’t care for Dixie: the south is remarkably UFO-free.
Preferred landing spots of UFOs are concentrated in the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, the three coastal states and Nevada – with a spike around, of course, Area 51.

Map O’ The Day #8 – Online Web Communities Map

2008-10-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

Somewhat in the style of a treasure map, this ‘Map of Online Communities’ shows MySpace, Wikipedia, SecondLife and other user-generated phenomena now populating the internet.

The geography is not as random as one could assume at first glance. Area and position are significant. Thus, each community’s geographic area represents its estimated size, and the ‘compass-shaped island’ gives clues as to what each quarter signifies:

North are more ‘practical’ communities,
South is for the ‘intellectuals’.
West lie the communities with a ‘real life’ connection,
East those with a focus on the web itself.

Map O' The Day #7 - Eclipse Map

2008-10-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

If you want to witness a total solar eclipse and you live in Europe, you’re out of luck until at least 2026. Unless you live in one of a few of Europe’s geographical extremities (i.e. the Faeroe Islands, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Abkhazia and other parts of eastern Georgia or the southern part of Russia), the astronomical phenomenon will pass you by.

North Americans are in a bit more luck: on August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse will culminate in the sky close to Memphis, Tennessee. And on April 8, 2024, an eclipse will be visible in a band stretching from Maine to Mexico.

South America will have three solar eclipses. On July 11, 2010 and again on July 2, 2019, eclipses will be visible across two different bands of Chile and Argentina. The third one will culminate over Patagonia on December 14, 2020. Oh, and there is a small strip of Brazil that witnessed the very beginning of an eclipse culminating faraway over the Libyan-Chadian border on March 29, 2006. Apart from that previous one, Africa witnessed two more eclipses, both over the southern part of the continent, in 2001 and 2002. But none until at least 2026. Small areas in Australia’s Northern Territory and the state of Queensland will observe an eclipse on November 13, 2012.

In Asia, bands of darkness will travel across Indonesia on March 9, 2016, China, India, Eastern Nepal, Northern Bangladesh and the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on July 2009 and China, Mongolia, the eastern tip of Kazakhstan and Siberia on August 8, 2008. That last one will culminate near the lands where the aboriginal Nenets tribe live. If you’re their shaman, you might want to note that date in your diary, and prepare a good speech.

Total solar eclipses occur when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, obscuring the sunlight and leaving visible only a much fainter corona. This ´totality´is only ever visible in a narrow bands of the Earth´s surface, as this map demonstrates. Interestingly, the shape of those bands bends with their relative position on the map - from slight curves close to the equator to almost circular nearer the pole.
Don´t think that the Sun (and Moon) behave differently over different parts of the globe: it´s the globe that gets distorted when it gets stretched out over a flat map surface, especially over the polar areas.

Map O' The Day #6 - The Boss

2008-10-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

So, it being Monday, I wanted today’s map to be a little less “serious”. So, for all your Bruce, (or Jersey, God help you), fans - Enjoy.

James Joyce once boasted that, should Dublin ever disappear off the face of the earth, the city could be reconstructed from the references to it in ‘Ulysses’.

The maker of this map did something similar: ‘Bruceville’ is New Jersey, as it can be reconstructed out of Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics.

Although one of his most famous albums was called ‘Nebraska’ (and one of his best-stelling singles was ‘Streets of Philadelphia’), Springsteen can’t hide the fact that he’s a real Jersey boy. The lyrics to his songs are peppered with references to the landscape of the Garden State. The Boss’s New Jersey is populated by ominous darknesses, glittering fairgrounds, empty parking lots, pining sweethearts, blinding ad signs – a landscape seen from that most essential machine for American living, the car.

Map O’ The Day #5 – Gastronomic Cartography: The France of Breads

2008-10-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

This brilliant map is in a gang of one, for the time being - gastronomic cartography. An intriguing category nonetheless: La France des pains (’The France of Breads’) visually demonstrates the place of origin of France’s different local types of bread. It turns out they come in a lot more shapes than the one foreigners (non-French foreigners, that is) usually associate with a French baguette. That shape is represented by the six stick-like loafs forming a little fence across the north of France:

30 - pain de fantaisie (fantasy bread)
31 - pain marchand de vin (wine merchant’s bread)
33 - pain saucisson (sausage bread) and
35 - pain boulot (work bread);
but also by
46 - pain condé (?)
46 - le tordu (twisted bread); and
69 - le phoenix, pain viennois (the phoenix or viennese bread) further south.

Interesting to note is that the elongated shape of the ‘typical’ French bread has quite some competition from the atoll-shaped bread:
12 - (illegible)
44 - pain collier (collar bread)
43 - le fer à cheval (horseshoe bread)
49 - (illegible)
52 - la couronne bordelaise (the crown of Bordeaux)
Other local French bread types more notable for their name than for their shape, are:
4 - pain chapeau (hat bread)
13 - pain bateau (boat bread)
22 - pain polka (polka bread)
28 - petit pain empereur (little emperor bread; why don’t they just call it ‘Napoleon’?)
48 - pain chemin de fer (railroad bread)

Map O' The Day #4 - Land of OZ

2008-10-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Oz is an imaginary magical monarchy, first introduced in L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). In all, Baum wrote 14 childrens’ books about Oz, presenting himself as the ‘Royal Historian’ of Oz. After his death, Ruth Plumly Thompson continued the series. Using clues in the series, fans have drawn up maps of Oz.

The Land of Oz is rectangular in shape, divided along the diagonals into four counties:

Munchkin Country (east)
Winkie Country (west)
Gillikin Country (north)
Quadling Country (south)

In the centre is Emerald City, the capital and seat of Princess Ozma. Oz is completely surrounded by deserts, insulating the country from invasion and discovery. The isolation may be splendid, it is not total: children from our world got through, as well as the Wizard of Oz and the more sinister Nome King. To prevent further incursions, Glinda created a barrier of invisibility around Oz.

Peculiar on some maps is that west is right, while east is left (while north is still top and south bottom). Some say this is because Baum looked at the wrong side of a glass slide while copying the map. Others believe the reversed compass rose simply reflects the ‘confusing’ nature of Oz, possibly due to Glinda’s spell. The reversal of east and west makes sense in that the Wicked Witch after enslaving the Winkies was called the ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ even though Winkie County is on the right hand side of the map. Robert A. Heinlein claims in his book The Number of the Beast that Oz is on a retrograde planet, spinning in the opposite direction of Earth.

Oz is the largest country on the continent of Nonestica, which also includes the countries of Ev, Ix and Mo (also known as Phunniland). Nonestica lies in the Nonestic Ocean – possibly a local name for the Pacific Ocean. In fact, some hints indicate that Oz is in the South Pacific: there are palm trees and horses are non-native. In Ozma of Oz, Dorothy is sailing to Australia when she is washed overboard and lands on the shores of Ev. Intriguingly, Oz is commonly used to refer to Australia, which borders the South Pacific Ocean.

The origin of the word ‘Oz’ is uncertain. One story holds that L. Frank Baum took it off a filing cabinet, which was divided into two alphabetical drawers: A-N and O-Z. Another holds that it is a corruption of Uz, the biblical homeland of Job. It could also be a reference to ounce (abbr. oz.) – with the story of Oz being an allegory for the populist struggle against the gold standard (personified by the powerless, frightened wizard in the books).Other theories state that ‘Os’ is and old English word for God, and in Wicked, a clever parody on the Oz material, it is proposed that Oz derives from ‘oasis’ or ‘ooze’, being a reference to the creation legend of a great flood.

Map O’ The Day #3 - Orwellian World of 1984

2008-10-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

So, in my opinion, perhaps one of the best books ever written.

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’, the world is ruled by three superstates:

• Oceania covers the entire continents of America and Oceania and the British Isles, the main location for the novel, in which they are referred to as ‘Airstrip One’.
• Eurasia covers Europe and (more or less) the entire Soviet Union.
• Eastasia covers Japan, Korea, China and northern India.
Unfortunately, there’s not much ’super’ to these states except their size. All three are totalitarian dictatorships. Oceania’s ideology is Ingsoc (English Socialism), Eurasia’s Neo-Bolshevism and Eastasia’s is the Obliteration of the Self (one imagines some kind of buddhist-inspired fascism. If one can). These ideologies are very similar, but the people are not informed of this.
The three states are in a perpetual state of warfare – sometimes two against one, sometimes all three against each other. These wars are fought in the disputed territories, running from North Africa over the Middle East and southern India to Southeast Asia.

And yet…

And yet the war might just not even be real at all. It’s clear that the Oceanic media are one-sided and fabricate ‘facts’. A dissident book central to ‘1984’ suggests the two other powers may actually be a fabrication of the government of Oceania, which would make it the world government. Or, on the other side of the scale of thinkable alternatives: Airstrip One is not an outpost of a greater empire, but the sole territory under the command of Ingsoc, which fabricates eternal global war to keep its people permanently mobilised, scrutinised and on rations.

Map O' The Day #2a/#2b – Views of Manhattan

2008-10-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

#2a. - NYC - Any and every American city is built up out of Avenues and Streets, most of them numbered. A much nicer way to describe a city is by mapping its neighborhoods. As in this map of Manhattan.

#2b. - Manhattan - A variation on Map #2a done by Alexander Cheek. The differences between these two maps indicate that neighborhoods in Manhattan are ‘fluid’, and constantly evolving.

Map O' The Day #1 – Microsoft Empire Map

2008-10-20T15:37:00.001-07:00

This graphic is an interesting take on the current IT landscape. The explosions and dotted lines express the barriers to entry and the specific conflict points relevant to their market segment.