Endless fun with temperature anomolies

The data crunchers over at Enigma decided to see how many of America's temperature anomalies--days in which the minimum and maximum temperatures went off the historical charts--skewed hot and cold over time. So they've made this interactive visualization tool that's sure to suck down hours of time for any of you weather geeks out there.  Honestly, this thing is amazing.  For a mind-puddling show zip to the beginning of February of 1996 and watch the animation servers get crushed by the 1996 perfect storm that hammered the country that winter.

Total eclipse of the ...

Today there's a solar eclipse going on in Southern Asia, Australia, Pacific, Indian Ocean, Antarctica.  So here's a comic about that from The Awkward Yeti by Nick Seluk:

Marcus Edwin (3/4) (guest post)

Hello! Guest contributor Amanda Murphyao here. I'm putting up historical cartoons involving the world or globe from the United States Library of Congress for the next few Mondays.

Here are a few more cartoons by Marcus Edwin that feature the globe:

Marcus - One of the biggest question marks in history - 1947-58

Marcus - the misfit - 1933

Marcus - The tight rope artist - 18 Feb 1955

Crimes of cartography

In a column called Design Crime over at Fast Company's Co. Design page they've found a map-based infographic produced by NBC Nightly News that they're calling "The Worst Infographic Of 2014 (So Far)".  From their review:

In short, just by changing the context of the original infographic, NBC Nightly News turned what was a straightforward visualization of America's demographics over time into some sort of alt-history map of 100 years of ethnic cleansing and racial segregation. Oh, and there's time travel in there for some reason too.

MIT's You Are Here project

A group of designers, computer scientists, artists, and educators at MIT is making at least one new map of a city each day. Eventually, the Social Computing Group hopes to make 100 maps for each of 100 cities, or 10,000 maps in total. The You Are Here project maps can be used in many new ways, because they are so much easier to create. Each is meant as a tool to inspire action.

Nobody lives here

This is a map from my friend Andy that was made by Nik Freeman showing all of the Census blocks in the US where the population is 0.

Same subway

Over the years we've done a few subway-map-themed posts. Here's another by Michael Crawford from The New Yorker and an article about a proposal by Architect and mapmaker Jug Cerovic to standardize the world's subway maps:   

How to win geography 20 questions

Let's suppose that you're playing a game of 20 questions where all the answers are geography-based.  This is a flowchart from the 19th century by Aloisius Edouard Camille Gaultier for how to construct intelligent geography questions. It's arguably an early version of the concept of “gamifying” the learning process, which is something I like a lot. It's from Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, by Manuel Lima.

Family portrait

For Earth Day this year we'll have a family portrait:

Marcus Edwin (2/4) (guest post)

Hello! Guest contributor Amanda Murphyao here. I'm putting up historical cartoons involving the world or globe from the United States Library of Congress for the next few Mondays.

Here are a few more cartoons by Marcus Edwin that feature the globe:

Marcus - Going my way - c 1946

Marcus - His Easter egg -- nothing in it now - 9 April 1944

Marcus - Moving again - 1950-4

Marcus - Oh, listen to the "mocking" bird - 16 May 1948

For breakfast

Happy Easter from a 25-year-old New Yorker cover

 

Unique jobs

This is a map from an article on the most unique jobs in each state in the US.

Way back

Here's comic using anthropmorphized planets one from UnearthedComics.com where artist Sarah Zimmerman frequently uses this Mother Earth-in-a-skirt character, for example here, here, here, and here.

Hootsuite of Thrones

I'm not sure what HootSuite is, but they did this incredible stop-motion Game of Thrones map tribute video ad that's quite something to behold:

Shouldering the Caribbean

This is rather more impressive tattoo artistry than we've seen before... not sure why it's a tattered map of what appears to be the Caribbean:

Mapping prejudice

Graphic designer Yanko Tsvetkov has been working on the project Mapping Stereotypes, a series of satirical illustrations of national prejudices. Many of them have infected the interwebs so you may have seen some of them:

Marcus Edwin (1/4) (guest post)

Hello! Guest contributor Amanda Murphyao here. I'm putting up historical cartoons involving the world or globe from the United States Library of Congress for the next few Mondays.

Here are a few cartoons by Marcus Edwin that feature the globe (more to come):

Marcus - 2 Oct 1949

Marcus - Ambidextrous - 17 Feb 1946

Marcus - An old act with new billing - 1947-53

Marcus - Easter egg coloring - 11 April 1952

Geology of Game of Thrones

Want a geologic map of the setting for Game of Thrones?  What if it's interactive and has extra pages of information on 500 million years of geomorphology?  The people of Generation Anthropocene have what you need.

The Fifth Beatle map contest

Here's a map-centric scene from the graphic novel The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story.  There's a contest to re-write the captions on this page and the winner gets a signed, numbered, slipcased "Limited Edition" of The Fifth Beatle

Changing shape

The meaning of design is made simple in "Shape," this wordless six-minute animation designed and directed by Johnny Kelly for Pivot Dublin, a Dublin City Council initiative that applies design thinking to city planning. The film, set to be shown in Irish classrooms as part of the MakeShapeChange campaign,

Play Risk while jogging/walking in your neighborhood

This is the kind of fitness app I'm interested in:

Back their Kickstarter now

Oxford's Information Geographics

Let's celebrate the Oxford Internet Institute and their Information Geographics with their tube Map of the Internet:


They've got dozens more fascinating map and geography infographics on the site

Matchstick Earth

We've posted several items of matchstick maps by artist Claire Fontaine . Here's an entire globe made from matchsticks by Andy Yoder. Unfortunately there's no video of it set ablaze.  That'd be AWESOME!

The globe in chains (guest post)

Hello! Guest contributor Amanda Murphyao here. I'm putting up historical cartoons involving the world or globe from the United States Library of Congress for the next few Mondays.

Fischetti - we've nothing to lose but our chains - 1953

Amanda's blog

I just want to point out that our frequent guest poster Amanda also has a blog with posts that frequently features maps in cartoons. Thanks for all your submissions to this blog Amanda. Here's a sample:

Without further ado, here’s Charles de Gaulle as France:



Charles de Gaulle, not France



Louis Mitelberg - Charles de Gaulle carte - 1962



John Collins – New Map of France – 1958

France, not to be confused with Charles de Gaulle

The Disney Theory

Penny Arcade by Mike Krahulk and Jerry Holkins does what I'm going to call a spoof on The Pixar Theory by Jon Negroni... that being that all Pixar movies exist in the same universe.  The Penny Arcade version appears to be linking all the Disney cartoons?  Or all the Disney Princess cartoons? Or at least two of them?  Anyway ... Hey there's a map in the cartoon!

Morgan Freeman GPS

Still want some celebrity voices for your GPS (watch the videos at the bottom of the post)?  Here's Morgan Freeman (kinda):

Killer map

An animated GIF showing executions in states that re-introduced the death penalty in 1977:

Scary death and a geography fail?

Here's a video from Cracked about different scary ways to die.  I'm wondering why they spent so much time talking about supervolcanoes under Yellowstone while showing Wyoming's rectangle-state-twin Colorado.

4 Things Science Says Can Kill You in the Next Minute -- powered by Cracked.com

Google Map them all!

You may have heard that Google has introduced a Pokemon challenge app built onto its Google Maps platform where the ultimate winner gets a job at Google with the title "Pokemon Master"

Google's legendary April Fools jokes have been mapulicious before.