Smogging or Non-Smogging?

Here's a fun little bit by Mike Peters, creator of this Mother Goose & Grimm strip.

Lord's Resistance Army Graphic Novel

Today's two-fer comes from the graphic novel "Army of God", by David Axe and Tim Hamilton.  They have published the first chapter of a graphic novel recounting the atrocities committed by the Lord's Resistance Army (and others) in the Congo.  The first chapter gives background for the area, which has had a deeply sad history in recent centuries, which continues to this day with what has been called "Africa's World War" and the murderous exploits of the Lord's Resistance Army.  So far Chapter 1 uses a few maps.  Future chapters will be forthcoming. The story promises to be sad, even difficult to read, but compelling.

Apocalyptic Google Earth

Maybe it's time to revisit Lio by Mark Tatulli.

Jesus GPS

In keeping with this week's earlier religion-themed post, here's another:

She needs longer arms

This girl giving directions to her house is absolutely precious... although it's a wonder that she can ever find her way home:

Liahona GPS

This may require a bit of an explanation.  The Book of Mormon begins with the story of a family living in Jerusalem around 600 B.C. The patriarch of the family (Lehi, the guy holding the round ball thing there) is told in a vision to leave Jerusalem with his family and a few others before Jerusalem gets destroyed.  So they're all out there in the wilderness and one morning Lehi comes out of his tent to find a round brass ball thing "of curious workmanship" that they call a "Liahona" and it's got little arrows in it and gives them messages about where to go and what to do.  This particular painting is fairly well known amongst Mormons as it's the standard image used in Sunday School to illustrate Lehi and his family finding the Liahona.  In recent years more than a few people have (half-)jokingly commented about how the Liahona might have been a time-travelling GPS unit.

Darkness reigns

Many of you may already be familiar with this image that shows what the Earth looks like at night with no cloud cover... and specifically the darkness that is North Korea and the lack of development/connectivity that represents:

Well, here's another one that's kinda similar that you might not be quite as familiar with.  It maps out the connectivity of Facebook users. And while, yes, North Korea is again "dark", in this one China, right there to the northwest of India is noticeably "dark" (not the empty Tibetan Plateau, but the area to the east of that which, while not entirely dark, is certainly dimmer than its 1+ billion population would suggest):

Facebook has very little market penetration into China.... But that doesn't mean that China has no online social networking technology.  In fact theirs, known as QQ (or, more specifically, QZone) is even larger than Facebook.

Simpsons Travel Log

Yesterday was the 500th episode of The Simpsons (I haven't seen it yet so plese no spoilers in the comments). Here is an article in Slate noting the 500th episode of The Simpsons with an interactive map of all the places that The Simpsons have visited over the years.

I think they should have included Grandpa Simpson, if only to be able to include Germany as a place that they've visited (what with Grandpa's various dubious WWII adventures), but then that gets into including all the places that Marge's family might have been shown visiting... though that's probably not any more than has been noted.

Anyway 500th episode of The Simpsons! Yay!

Winning location

The restaurant location manager at Krispy Kreme got a bonus for this one.

Google Map maze animation

Like wow. A company with enough money to create this set piece for an internet ad has some rather impressive resources:

When, not where

The Buckets by Greg Cravens with the teen character acting the part of a psychic... and the parent messin' with him... as it should be.

Geography Valentine two-fer

Another cartoon from Rosie Brooks.  This one has to have been a greeting card, no?

And because this is Two-fer Tuesday, here's another along the same Valentine's day theme:

This comes from a list of graphics showing different projections.  This one is actually a "conic" projection.... but it's easy to fall in love with it, no?

Hark! A map

It's time to introduce a new webcomic ... new to this blog that is. Hark! A Vagrant is a rather well-established and I dare say successful webcomic by Kate Beaton ... who I didn't realize had been featured in this blog before in a New Yorker cartoon. Why does this comic qualify?  See panel 11 below (click on the image to make it larger, easier to read). While I generally like Hark! A Vagrant, I haven't been following it much at all.  But I gotta say, my brain is convinced the name "Hark! A Vagrant" is an anagram and every time I visit the site it starts furiously spinning gears in a futile attempt at figuring it out... futile because I'm not very good at anagrams... and because it isn't one.

You are a Mesoamerican Wormhole?

So here's an archaeological site somewhere the Caribbean coast where a person could be in two places at once... apparently.

Human impact animation

Here's a fun little animation showing a map of human impact on the planet. It's from an organization called Globaïa which focuses on “a better understanding of big history".
Here's an article about it.

Anthropocene Mapping from Globaïa on Vimeo.

By their maps ye shall know them

We haven't done one from Randall Munroe's XKCD in a while (click on the image to make it larger and more legible).  It's the mention of the map in the 4th panel that warrant's this one's appearance in our blog.

At the actual webcomic, hovering over the image reveals this additional message in the "title-text":

I recently had someone ask me to go get a computer and turn it on so I could restart it. He refused to move further in the script until I said I had done that.

Primarily next two-fer

I was hoping that for today's two-fer I'd have some more cartoon maps of recent/upcoming primary states, but I couldn't find anything new for Nevada, Minnesota, Missouri, or Colorado. If ya got anything then please send it in.  In the meantime all I've got are two election-related cartoons:
The first is from Daryl Cagle and is from the 2008 POTUS election season which at least shows an anthropomorphized Nevada... and some other states.... including Michigan ... and even though those are from four years ago, I think I'll still count them towards our tally of states specifically mentioned in our maps-in-comics blog here  (now at 33 of 50):

The other one is a shot at Mitt Romney for his Swiss bank accounts by Bill Day.  The visual gag is clever enough... but Mitt's hair is never this mussed.

By the way, I am keeping in mind the appearances of country maps in our blog, and after each of the 50 states gets featured on this blog I'll show the list of which countries have and haven't been featured... and we'll see if we can get all of those... although Angora might be tough.  But if you find any other nations featured in maps in comics lemme know.

Questionable Content

Questionable Content  by J. Jacques.  One of the best webcomics out there.  In this episode displaying the rim of a blue marble Earth.

...yer sign

I'll bet many of y'all are saving up to use this one during the next thunderstorm.  I know I am.

Geography burn

I don't have video for this geography fail/win, but it does seem to be in keeping with this week's pattern of failures in geography.

Hungary pains

I know we've already done one epic geography fail video this week, but it's Groundhog Day tomorrow, so let's do another.

This time it's from the now-cancelled Jeff Foxworthy-hosted game show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?". Prepare for 3 minutes of cringe: