HOME |
RSS | 
Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps blog posted this map that accompanied the Russian translation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. It has a distinctly Slavic motif, including log homes for the Hobbit dwellings (instead of those cute Hobbit houses).
Link – via The Map Room | More Hobbit Maps
If you stand at the South Pole and walk in any direction, you’d be walking north, wouldn’t you? So how do people in Antarctica read a map or give directions? Minnesotastan looked it up, and the answer is: they throw out the directions from the globe and make up a system. The continent is labeled with “East Antarctica” and “West Antarctica” in this map, but of course you must go south to get to either. There are actually two conventions for mapping the continent, as you’ll read in this post at TYWKIWDBI. Link
Graham Roberts and GOOD Magazine collaborated to create Wanderlust, an interactive graphic depicting some of the most famous travels in history and fiction: Link
Comments Off
The German site Zeit Online posted a map in which you can compare the evacuation around Japan’s Fukushima power plant to the populations around nuclear plants in the US and Canada. You can adjust the area of evacuation with a slider. Zoom in on a red dot, and see the stats. For example, 37,513 people live within 18 miles of the Callaway (Missouri) pressurized-water reactor nuclear plant, shown in this screenshot. The same type of evacuation would affect over a million people near the Indian Point plant in New York. However, Japan is beginning to evacuate some areas beyond the 30km (18 mile) radius. Link -via Metafilter
I’m glad that someone has done this, though I wish they had used names rather than flags; I would never be able to identify three of the entities on the outer part of the orange circle as Andorra, San Marino and Monaco. Fortunately some of the names and additional explanation is available at the Strange Maps blog at Big Think.*
This diagram is a particularly instructive map, too: it neatly visualises the gaps and overlaps between all kinds of supranational institutions in Europe – differences which for the most part are too subtle for any but the most attentive observer. All will be aware of the ‘Europe’ that is a less than homogenous conglomerate of nation states, with an unwieldy Brussels bureaucracy at its centre. This European Union, which consists of 27 member states, is merely the most visible of several European unions, all committed to different versions of the same goal: European integration.
The diagram also includes one statelet whose euros are much sought after by collectors.
Previously on Neatorama: The Great British Venn Diagram.
Link.
*Addendum: A hat tip to Feodor for noting that Strange Maps got the diagram from Wikipedia’s “Supranational European Bodies,” where the flags are clickable to the corresponding country entries. (It is also described there as a Euler diagram, not a Venn diagram).
When a TV show has been running as long as The Simpsons has, you get to know its fictional world pretty well. Jeff Wysaski took the information from the show and mapped out all the stores in the Springfield Mall for your convenience. This is only a small detail of the entire upper-level and lower-level map at Pleated Jeans. Link
Today is Presidents Day in the US, and it is UNESCO International Mother Language Day everywhere. This is a day to celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism, and to learn about the world’s languages. National Geographic has an interactive world map highlighting areas where languages are in danger of dying out, as part of their Enduring Voices Project. As it is now, one of the world’s 7,000 languages is gone for good an average of every two weeks.
Language defines a culture, through the people who speak it and what it allows speakers to say. Words that describe a particular cultural practice or idea may not translate precisely into another language. Many endangered languages have rich oral cultures with stories, songs, and histories passed on to younger generations, but no written forms. With the extinction of a language, an entire culture is lost.
Much of what humans know about nature is encoded only in oral languages. Indigenous groups that have interacted closely with the natural world for thousands of years often have profound insights into local lands, plants, animals, and ecosystems—many still undocumented by science. Studying indigenous languages therefore benefits environmental understanding and conservation efforts.
Dan Meth came up with the definitive map of fantasy places you know and love -all in one big continent! It’s “the very first accurate map of the entire fantasy world.” Let the arguments begin. Link -via Buzzfeed
The design of this handcrafted item from Whole Cloth Quilts is taken from a vintage New York City subway map. Karyn, the quilter, made it as a wall hanging. It’s compact enough in size that, in an emergency, it could be taken off the wall and used to navigate the subway system.
Link -via Not Martha
If believers see faces of Jesus on toasts, what do pareidolia-prone cartographers see? Maps and maps everywhere, even on a dog’s nose! Here’s a neat post by Frank Jacobs of Strange Map about "accidental" cartography, based on his readers’ submissions:
“My dog has a map of the world on her nose. Sort of,” writes Mililani Smythe. But of course: there’s the American continent, right in the middle!
Remember the United States of Shame, where each state was labeled with the statistic it was worst in? Ilya Gerner figured that there should be a statistic that each state is best in, and made a map accordingly. However, I’m not sure how proud I can be that Kentucky is the best armed state. Link to map. Link to explanation. -via Buzzfeed
Jeff Wysaski of Pleated Jeans wrote "Whether it’s a fat population, high rate of STDs or excessive tax rate, it turns out that every state ranks dead last in at least one unsavory category." So he compiled a most unusual "worst of" list, featuring your favorite home state (Oh, poor, poor North Dakotans!)
Hailing from California, the state with the worst *cough* air pollution, I give you The United States of Shame: Link - via metafilter
This is pretty nifty: Axis Maps produces street maps of San Francisco, Downtown Chicago and Boston (New York is next) that accurately depict streets and highways, as well as parks and neighborhoods using only typography. Take a look: Link – via Holy Kaw
(L) The L Mighty Wallet (M) The Underground Mighty Wallet (R) NYC Subway Map Mighty Wallet – $14.95
You’ll never be lost at the subway with these Mighty Wallets from the NeatoShop! The clever and super-strong Tyvek-made wallets are printed with maps from various subway systems, like the ‘L’ in Chicago, the London Underground, and the NYC Subway.
As an added bonus, you’re camouflaging your money and cards inside what looks like ordinary ol’ maps: Link
Comments Off 
Remember the United States of TV map that assigned a show to each of the 50 United States? My Food Looks Funny did that with food, assigning a representative dish to each state. I can’t argue with fried chicken for Kentucky, but I think of catfish or barbecue for Tennessee instead of tomatoes. Link -via Laughing Squid
The New York Times has a series of interactive maps of the US with which you can study population distribution by race and ethnicity, income, housing (such as mortgage, home value, and rent), and by education. I found that the average household income in my county in 2009 was $21,195, which is 10% less than in the year 2000. The data comes from the US Census Bureau. Link -via Metafilter
Slate has an interactive map showing when and where cases of diabetes are soaring. At the link, you can adjust the year with a slider and mouseover the counties to find yours. My county had a diabetes rate of 11.4% in 2008. Link -via Gene Expression
What a neat idea! Type the name of each state in the US into the Google search field one at a time, and see what autocomplete suggestions come up. Then make a map of them. That’s what happened at Very Small Array, which resulted in this. I would have guessed Kentucky easily. See a larger version of this map at the site. Link -via The Daily What
Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions – it seems there’s no end to the hazards that threaten to befall us. What areas are most at risk of experiencing a natural disaster? By looking at a region’s history of disasters, fault lines and underground magma the io9 team has compiled a map of the world’s hot zones. Much to my relief the area that I call home around the Great Lakes in Canada looks relatively risk-free.
Link – Via The Map Room
Andrew Shears created this US Map with a TV show to go with each state. It’s good to see that TV sometimes happens outside of New York and California! Shears also explains why he choose each show. You can enlarge the picture at Thinking Pseudogeographically. Link -via The Daily What
You might remember how Randall Munroe of xkcd created a map of the internet in 2007. A lot of things have changed since then, so he made a completely new map to reflect the state of online communities today. Just a portion of the map is shown here. Go to xkcd and enlarge the map, and you’ll find Neatorama in the inset of the Blogosphere area (in the Sea of Opinions), a tiny island off the coast near Deadspin and Lifehacker. Look around, and you’ll see plenty of cleverness, such as Facebook’s privacy controls isolated in a pool of lava, and a meteor crater where Craiglist’s adult services used to be. Link -via Metafilter
Update 10/6/10 by Alex: Woohoo! Randall knows we’re alive – Neatorama made it to this year’s map, right alongside Boing Boing, Lifehacker, and Deadspin:
Image: Eric Fischer [Flickr]
Eric Fischer took data from San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation agency (Muni) bus routes and turned it into a graph titled "A day of Muni":
Eric Fischer took publicly available data from the Muni (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) showing the geographic coordinates of their vehicles to create this map showing average transit speeds over a 24-hour period. Muni is one of America?s oldest public transit agencies and today carries over 200 million customers per year in 80 routes throughout the city and county of San Francisco.
Black lines represent very slow movement under 7 mph. Red are less than 19 mph. Blue are less than 43 mph. Green lines depict faster speeds above 43 mph.
Comments Off 
Bruce Springsteen sang a lot of songs about places -more than you realize until you see Springstreets. Daniel Cassaro created a map of those places enshrined in song lyrics.
Warning: Springstreets is not to scale and should not be used while on a drive, last chance power or otherwise. The only thing you can really use this map to find is yourself.
The image here is cropped; see several larger images with more detail at the artist’s site. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Animals on the Underground is a collection of over 20 animal characters made using only lines, stations and interchange symbols on the London Underground map, created by illustrator Paul Middlewick in 1988. In 2003, the concept was used in a poster campaign by advertising agency McCann-Erickson to promote the London Zoo.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Comments Off 
This map, or geoid, shows the contours of the earth in a more precise manner than ever before. It was constructed with measurements taken by Europe’s Goce satellite.
Launched in 2009, the sleek satellite flies pole to pole at an altitude of just 254.9km – the lowest orbit of any research satellite in operation today.
The spacecraft carries three pairs of precision-built platinum blocks inside its gradiometer instrument that sense accelerations which are as small as 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000 of the gravity experienced on Earth.
This has allowed it to map the almost imperceptible differences in the pull exerted by the mass of the planet from one place to the next – from the great mountain ranges to the deepest ocean trenches.
Two months of observations have now been fashioned into what scientists call the geoid.
This technology allows mapping of places that were too inaccessible for such precision before, such as the Himalayas. The BBC has a lot more on this project. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
Comments Off 
The surface of this world globe is like a blackboard. It comes with the outlines of the continents painted on it, but you can fill in the national boundaries and country names with chalk, so the globe will never be out of date (like mine, which has East Germany, the USSR, and Yugoslavia on it). Only $450! Link -via Nag on the Lake
Flickr user Ambrosia Voyeur found a fascinating map published in 1927 that Hollywood studios used to find relatively nearby locations to film far-away places. As you can see, certain spots in California were considered good for filming places like Siberia, Sherwood Forest, the Sahara Desert, and other movie settings. The source is The American Film Industry by Tino Balio. According to the book, the variety of available geography in southern California is one of the reasons Hollywood became the center of the film industry. Link to image. Link to book. -via Buzzfeed
You don’t have to have a printer to make your own envelops, but if you do, you can print a Map Envelope! Enter your location, print out and fold, and your envelope will have a Google Maps image of the place the enclosed letter (or whatever) originated on its inside. You can even add a message for a little something extra for your recipient. Link -via the Presurfer
This map is the creation of Neil Freeman, who noted that the current 50 states have populations ranging from a half million to 33 million.
This Electoral Reform Map redivides the territory of the United States into 50 bodies of equal size – 281,421,906 divided by 50 is 5,616,997. This map shows one possible way to redraw the fifty states… The map was laid out with no political orientation or wealth. As a result, states may be favor one or the other parties.
In a U.S. Senate based on this map, each Senator would represent the same number of constituents.
Link, via James Fallows.
San Francisco is a city that has hosted and inspired many great writers. So artist Ian Huebert created an enormous map of that city filled with the words of novelists and poets who either wrote their works in those locations, or located their stories there. In the links, you’ll find a larger image. And at Strange Maps, you’ll find a list of every author and work mentioned.
Larger Image | News Story via Strange Maps | Artist’s Website | Image: San Francisco Gate
Comments Off 
| FEATURED ITEMS FROM THE NEATOSHOP | |
 |
Mustache Bottle Opener |
 |
My Cryptozoological Family - Family Car Stickers |
 |
Zombie Hand Bottle Opener |
View more: New Items &
Best Sellers |
|
